


Solar Flared

by furrywing



Category: Silverwing - Kenneth Oppel
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dark Comedy, Gen, POV First Person, Terribly Written Comedy Also
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25660927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furrywing/pseuds/furrywing
Summary: Chaotic and with confidence for miles, Nuria Vampyrum never gave a lot of thought about going home and making amends.  After escaping the same prison in which Goth and Throbb were housed, Nuria finds the four unlikely allies travelling together.Goth needs Hibernaculum. Cama Zotz needs to bring the Silverwings south. And Nuria, ever the opportunist, finds herself thrust in the middle, realizing she's fallen into the opportunity of a lifetime. Prove your loyalty to your god and your people, go home a hero; or protect the runty bats keeping you alive at the expense of one very irritating prince.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	1. Nuria of Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> Of the many reasons I stopped working on my first Silverwing fic, this shift in direction is one. My other projects right now are unbelievably dark (just... look at the fandoms) and I needed some levity. Then Nuria came into my head some time ago. A beautifully unreliable narrator.

Let me tell you, there is nothing quite as magnificently humiliating as being trapped. And here I was.

Mine was a beautiful prison, as magnificently designed as it was humiliating. Lush heat emanated from the forest floor, a sea of earth and moss and suffocating yet delicious humidity. The sort that fills your lungs to bursting.

Fat leaves and succulent flowers thrived alongside the moss, intertwined with creeping ivy, sedge, and exposed concrete (it’s the little things that count). The trees strained against the ceiling, hoping for an escape that would never come while sturdy vines consumed their branches and strangled their trunks. The water here that didn’t pour on an eerie and mysteriously fixed schedule came from a trough I oft watched be refilled when I was supposed to be sleeping. Sunken into the ground, its metal walls were disguised by overgrowth so that at first I’d thought it a lovely little pond, yet the water tasted strangely polluted, reeking faintly of chemicals rather than pleasantly familiar stagnation.

A clever illusion, and an illusion all the same. I had to give it to the humans, they were crafty ones. It could have been seamless. It could have been perfect.

There could be much worse places to spend a cold season.

The night I hung in a mist net, a tangle of threads meant for much smaller prey than I, comes straight to mind. Cramped, suffocated, thinking my wings were ready to snap off. That I should be laid low by something so basic was just one more thorn in the side of an already disastrous year. If death had come for me, in my despair I would have welcomed it.

Tonight – were it night, for the sun and moon did not exist here, instead the lights flicked on and off at what seemed like regular intervals, just like the rain - I flew another lap, one of many now uncountable laps, around the small jungle in a matter of seconds, alone, agonizingly bored, agitated for all the unnecessary noise and banging coming from a small cavern in the painted sky. One of two such tiny caves existed, each blocked by a grate, allowing fresh air to flow merrily in and out. If you could call it that.

That strange night air told me one thing for certain. Odorous, sulphuric, acrid, I wasn’t in the jungle anymore.

As I passed the grate, straining to hear what might be grunts and shouts so as to know who else shared this prison, the pitch changed dramatically. What sounded almost like an argument whose words were lost became the scraping of concrete that made my skin crawl and my teeth hurt. I wanted to shout at them to shut up but I’d long since learned whoever else was in the building they never heard me. Or didn’t care. Jerks.

As if to purposefully up my irritation, it began to rain from my false sky, out of small silver protrusions that looked rather like upside down flowers. If flowers could rain. Not a gentle misting as was the standard either. A no holds, hog wild monsoon came screaming through the windless, still forest, a blur of vertical sheet rain. After several minutes, flying became impossible. Water streamed off my fur, my brown hair was matting on my forehead and sticking my eyelashes together so they turned in and were getting pasted to my actual eyes, and the splattering ruckus of water slamming into the foliage rose and rose, becoming deafening.

So drenched and annoyed I landed on a sinuous vine, trying to put boredom and solitude out of my mind, pretending I hadn’t lost interest in the only enjoyable activity my artificial jungle (Aw, yes, and mine it was, wasn’t it? Princess of something so grand!) had to offer: infuriating the humans who kept me here. (Mature? No. Fun? Certainly. Productive? Oh, I hoped so indeed.)

Shuffling along the vine, I camped under an exceptionally large, stiff, and laughably fake frond of a lovely fern somehow glued to a very real tree. Like every other moment, the jungle left me with my thoughts glaring up at the vent.

Night One in this place sat up there in my all time lows; Day One being an easy follow up.

Those first moments of freedom, when I woke alone, I went slamming straight into a glass wall in seconds, before I fell out of the air and into a dazed, battered pile of wings, my ego critically injured, hissing, thinking beasts would pop out of the dense undergrowth at any moment to grab me as a quick snack. The cracking of wood and the loud rustle of fronds as blood roared in my ears and a paw crept over me, reaching for me... I screamed. Then a dull-eyed snow white mouse scurried over my foot as if it didn’t just look its death right in the face.

A quick snack I was not. It, on the other wing, not so lucky.

Such was my first lesson about the false jungle. For reasons unknown to me, a single wall was a glass window clear as the most crystalline, perfect lagoon. Even when it rained and mud splattered onto the sheen, it would in those times I left the room be cleaned up before I returned.

The jungle’s second lesson came immediately after I recovered from my initial flirtation with fatal injury. The kingdom that I ruled over had no subjects. No birds, no bats, no beasts. Just me and these bland, easy to catch mice. They were naive as can be. (But who am I to criticize? Stuck in a net like some dozy butterfly.)

Put the fear of Cama Zotz into them, that seemed like an excellent idea initially. When they didn’t immediately run, I’d scoop them up, let them know I was a threat, and then drop them again. Wait for them to scurry off and hide, which sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. I had all the time and so all the patience in the world for them to become acclimated to fear. In the face of capture, hunger hadn’t been on my mind. Entertainment and catharsis had. Until soon I was flooded with rodents who refused to have any sense, made no conversation, and must have been raised somewhere just like this, free from predators and the thrilling delight of danger. Sounds like a boring existence, this safety? No? You haven’t lived.

With lacklustre company, what’s a girl to do?

But I was telling you about the glass walls, wasn’t I? The home of my keepers.

Strange birds, humans are. They watched me at the same time each day, just after the second round of mist finished up. Late in night, as the artificial lights hummed and crackled to life, sometimes one of them would come to me.

I hated this particular animal but he also fascinated me.

His grip was crushing, and try though I might to turn a grab him every time I could not.

My life was a horrific blur of abuse, moments of unexpected compassion, and then more abuse that I put behind me whenever my mind was clear enough. (You try being stabbed with poison and stared at for hours. It's all fun and needles until someone fails to lose an eye.)

But sometimes I wouldn’t be quite all that faded when they pulled me out of the forest after poisoning me. After a few trials, I reached lesson number three. I pretended to drift off quickly, but wait. Then I pretended not to wake up at a reasonable time, but kept my eyes open a crack.

Beyond the glass, in that room the humans accessed with their secret door, I caught just a glimpse. It could have changed everything.

There was a neighbouring jungle.

I shrieked and fought then. Screamed in their useless faces, “Why aren’t I there! Why am I alone!"

Dullards, humans are. Bad as the mice. The man didn’t make the slightest attempt to understand me.

So I bit him. He stabbed me. I fell asleep. Woke up, bit him again.

Rabies, am I right?

Alas, no.

Who knew what they wanted, but I knew what I wanted. Out. Or, more specifically, into that second room.

That’s what solitude does for you. Muddles up your priorities.

While the rain tried to drown out the neighbouring din, and sure the other racket was coming from that oft glimpsed second room, my loneliness and frustration surged.

Then the fern leaf buckled, dumping half an hour of accumulated water into my face.

Sputtering and wheezing my ears pricked as a soft alarm went off, a small beeping. The secret door opening!

And not just my door.

The human walked carefully in, but his eyes were fixed elsewhere, moving towards the grates, studying them, and distracted he’d left me the perfect exit. In seconds I was among the strange devices the humans had. The windows with pictures, the beeping machinery, the metal tables. And to my delight another door was open.

The second jungle real! It wasn't a fever dream at all! With a burst of speed I swooped into it, through the chaos, suddenly hearing the man cry out while I was shouting joyously. Calling out! Asking who else was here!

I circled several times until being sure.

No one!

There weren’t other people. But the source of my frustration.

There where the wind whistles through, shaking the artificial branches, waking the tasteless mice, usually lays a grate. At least in my own kingdom. Tonight? In this kingdom it was gone. Tonight, I was about to be gone.

Something whizzed by my wing with a hum and my eyes snapped back. The human had a rifle pointed at me with their poison darts.

Not a chance, not tonight.

Laughing while he shrieked, one victory swoop over his head led me forward.

I, Nuria of Nowhere, Princess of the Dead, Harasser of Humans, Devourer of Souls (provided they were bland little mice), a vampyrum of the finest lack of pedigree, was free.

Then I was off, sweeping up into that lovely metal bosom, toward that great unknown. As I passed the human, I let my claws rake across his cheek.

Just something to remember me by.

I’d never believe what was to come next.


	2. Pigeon

“What the ever loving-”

I practically flew backwards, wings rowing like mad while the swarm grew in strength. Power in numbers. They were a blur of grey feathers and eyes glinting with a look so cold they could have been flecks of obsidian rather than blazing amber marbles. Occasionally in the flurry a white frosted beak could be seen and these ugly protrusions I was about to be introduced to in the worst way if I didn’t skedaddle pronto.

Barely seconds outside of the cursed prison, they’d been on me, dropping out of the sky like dark avengers. And me, shivering with cold, mind fogged, and gasping for breath, I had not expected such a violent welcome back to the outside world. The crawl up the vent had been awful, and the humans had laid a trap at the very end, a metal propeller that I evaded with cost. But a bruised side was better than no side at all as I remembered those chopping whirling blades battering into me while I squeezed by.

Soon I was shaking so badly I could hardly keep myself aloft, my soaked fur clumped and drying with what might have been a hint of ice.

Things were getting dire. These cursed birds were going to force me to a flat topped roof and peck my eyes right out and I was tired enough that it might just happen.

“It’s that Silverwing!” one pigeon cried, pointing a wing straight at me.

“The hell is a sil- oh my God, they're crazy!”

I dove. Eyes tearing, bones creaking, folding my arms back and falling like a stone, hoping I'd gain enough distance. In free fall my stomach lurched. Their wings were loud, a whipping and whooshing far too reminiscent of the human’s fan.

These vermin were fast, I'll give them that. Before I could spin away they had me pinned, their coos and squawks filling my ears like the cruellest of thundershowers. I twisted, squirmed, snapped at their scaly feet, and drew a little blood for their trouble. Standing on my wings, their claws piercing, they occasionally pecked at the delicate membrane, not even interested in discussing the situation like mature adults. What the hell had I done! (Okay, well, a few things.) The ruckus we made filled the skies; me screaming my fury into the heavens (first the mist net and now this abject humiliation), them hopping about and bobbing their iridescent heads when they weren’t trying to tug my arms off.

Finally, I managed to flip over and pull free, enough to take a breath at least. My wings I folded stiffly at my sides, keeping them as safe and inaccessible as possible, droplets of my own blood staining my fur. Fangs bared, a growl in my throat.

“Get off, you nasty things!”

“You’ll answer for your crimes, Silverwing!”

“So you _can_ talk!” I chided as if they were nothing more than hatchlings. “I thought it was just a lot of nonsense I was hearing. How late in life to learn pigeons have a cognitive range wider than a gnat – ow, that _hurts_!”

A pigeon had snuck up behind and took a quick go at my toes.

I snapped, lunged, pulling out a feather from the nearest harasser, a large bird who I’d say had a surly expression, but the trouble with birds is they all have surly expressions (especially the chicks; always angry, always hungry, always deliciously crunchy). There’s just something about the little eyes and those clean, naked beaks. Only owls were free of this curse, with a look of perpetual shock in their round moon eyes.

“It’ll be the last thing you learn!” the larger pigeon proclaimed, not taking my jab, perhaps not smart enough to even understand it. I doubled down.

“Since I’m the only one here with the capacity to learn, I’d call you correct!” I spun to snap at another of these aggressors, missed them by a hair... or I should say feather. “Sorry to say, my gnat brained friend, but you’ll be regretting your decisions before the sun rises to put your ugly mug on display. It’ll look much prettier when I’m done with it!”

“Admit to your crimes and we might be more lenient with you.”

“A big word! My God, it’s not as bad as I imagined!”

“You’re in no place to be insolent!”

Since I wasn’t being mobbed at the moment, I disagreed. But this game of vague accusations lost its charm while my anger ceased to warm me and the sweat from our star lit chase turned dangerous, frostbite on my own horizon. If I didn’t get airborne again soon, losing my wings to birds was the last thing I needed to worry over.

“What are you idiots even on about!” I demanded. I didn't mean to sound stressed, I meant to sound even more brazen and contemptuous. My tone just slipped.

Now a pigeon has a much more limited emotional range than a bat when it comes to exchanging insults. Their voices naturally high and melodic, it’s difficult for a them to reach a pitch stronger than an annoying coo, which made it difficult to take them seriously. Everything sounded comedic.

Another pigeon hopped forward, then another. They were getting bold again while the cold came for me.

Then an even shriller voice cried, “You bats are nothing but murderers! We saw our sister on that roof, killed by you when you came out of that cave!”

So that must have been the carrion smell which, had I not been attacked, I would have investigated posthaste, never missing the opportunity for a snack. Didn’t these fools know that raptors came for them on a daily basis? Granted it was night but nothing said that pigeon hadn’t been slain during the sunny hours.

“You’re in league with the Silverwings!”

“Murdered in cold blood!”

“Inspired by those two lawbreakers who attacked us last night, weren’t you? Admit it!” the lead pigeon cooed... I mean cried valiantly. “Where are the other bats! Tell us and we’ll give you mercy.”

In my exhaustion, they’d closed in on me again and I made the mistake of flaring my wings, hoping to batter the crowd away. Pigeons may be smaller than me, but they weren’t exactly runts either, and the group seized my arms again, pinning them, cracking my shoulder for good measure with the pull straining my elbows.

Things were starting to make some sense now, in a feather-brained kind of way, which is to say they were making hardly any sense at all.

Given that I’d seen no indication of more glamorous species here in the north, I gathered that the Silverwings were some kind of meeker, insect obsessed types, which made the whole situation all the more inane. Few bats were as magnificent as we Vampyrum, hate to tell you.

“Hold up,” I said, suddenly skeptical, the mocking chime leaving my voice, replaced by sheer disbelief even as they pecked at me again. “You think a tiny bat can – _ow_ – catch and – _oohh_ – kill a pigeon – _ouch -_ I’m trying to have a conversation with you!”

“Summon General Brutus,” the leader growled.

This guy again. I wondered who he was. I’d heard the name Brutus a few times on my travels, often from chickadees and cardinals about to reach their final destination and proclaiming their great posthumous revenge. Some pigeon elder who made the decisions for his (and I had to laugh at this) sky rat soldiers? Surely when they’d already committed themselves to maiming me they wouldn’t require a second opinion.

“And what if I told you I wasn’t a Silver-what’sit?”

“A _Silverwing_! Stop talking, murderer,” he said again, pecking me hard on the forehead so lights went off in my eyes.

One important thing about me. When I’m angry? I get a bit stupid. And anger wasn’t beginning to cut it anymore.

I’d been chased out. Captured, roughed up, stabbed, stalked, driven mental with boredom, monsooned on, nearly chopped in two by a propeller, and now _this_ insolence _._

Before the night ended I promised to make at least one of these fools regret their decision and fill my stomach at the same time.

“Why’d I murder something as foul tasting as you flying excreta receptacles?” (Excreta: a fancy word for bird shit. I doubted they’d ever heard it, and betted on it riling them further.)

“You admit it!”

(Or not. This was the mice all over.)

“I told you,” another bird said. “The Silverwings are killing and eating us.”

“Let’s just break a wing and take her to the Tower. General Brutus can decide her fate.”

Oh, Zotz, why must they be like this?

A wiser bat might realize that not talking was the better thing to do when covered in pigeons. To listen and observe and look for a stealthy out. Save that breath for fighting. To perhaps even throw yourself upon their mercy, to beg to speak with this Brutus, O' Mighty King of the Pigeons, before any official choices were made that everyone may regret. Not me.

“Look here, you trash eating parasite, if anyone’s going to be losing something tonight, it’s you. Afraid of a Silverwing? Stop cowering behind your sky rats and face me like a... like a pigeon!” Really, what else is there to say.

“She don’t need wings to speak with the General. We amputate them first!” someone shouted among the din of rising outrage.

“Yes!”

It became a cry, quickly being picked up.

“Amputate! Before the General!”

Uh-oh.

But I wasn’t done yet.

The capture and abuse of a Vampyrum Spectrum is always a destructive act. Destructive to the animal stupid enough to try. Then just as I was about to tear half my wing membrane off busting free of their grip and carrying the nearest bird away with me into the lights and the humans’ roaring machinery to be crushed under speedy black wheels, thunder crashed over us. The pigeons flinched and leapt back, a sudden chorus of coos and purrs and squeals, and before they had any chance of recovery two bats, wingspans so glorious they blocked out the moon and the pink sky, swooped over head, their fangs glinting.

My saviours!

So there was a God, wasn’t there! Deep in his very soul, Zotz appreciated my meagre efforts. These must have been the occupants of the second jungle, whose work had secured my own freedom.

But something was off about these two, the closer they got, when flashes of their faces and hair was seen between the panicked horde of puffed chests and splayed feathers as the birds crashed into one another in their fear.

These bats looked far too much like copies of me.

The birds didn’t notice. Screaming they scattered as the giants swooped silently overhead, circling, rushing them and then pulling quickly away. Soon the pigeons had cleared the roof. And were no more.

“My dear,” a calm, sultry voice said, “if you can fly, then let us fly now.”

I stared, head darting back and forth, seeking my saviours.

A single bat, his eyes as white as his body, fluttered in the air where once the two me’s had been. He seemed to look beyond me, ears twitching rapidly, mouth open to cast echoes. Weary, I lit from the roof and flapped after him, curiosity on hold. It was just nice to be off the ground, surrounded by silence I never thought I’d miss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zephyr, master of disguise.  
> I know pigeons can't see echoes. Nor can owls. Confusingly, Orestes addresses this. More confusingly, Zephyr uses echo projection to deceive some pigeons chasing Shade. I'm just going to pretend Zephyr's echoes are special, and powerful enough to deceive animals without echolocation.


	3. Lost Souls That Make It

Human, bird, bat, life is full of unexpected surprises.

We flew for a short time, this small, ancient creature’s sedate pace suiting my faded and exhausted body nicely. Everything ached. My shoulder felt like it had been wrenched something awful, the frosty air stinging the many punctures and tears that would leave ugly scars in my otherwise beautiful dark wings. A headache was developing where that arrogant pigeon had bludgeoned me and frostbite was still an encroaching threat. I’d soon folded my wingtips in to try and warm them.

Fortune and grace followed us across the city lights, two souls unbothered by more sky rats, until just ahead, growing larger every moment was a great tower reaching far above its brothers, topped by a cross and adorned with hundreds of windows. Unlike most windows, like the tricksome wall in the jungle, these announced themselves to the world in an ocean of colours and what looked like hazy pictures that I could barely make out as if the glass itself had been infused with human drawings. Fascinated I came to the nearest, squinting in the rainbow of light that shined back at me.

The other bat tapped my shoulder, flicking his chin towards something jutting from the cathedral’s spire.

I grinned.

Gargoyles.

What a beautiful sight. They crouched on beams of stone, gazing out over the city like guardians waiting to come alive, their mouths open in the semblance of a roar.

Those gaping maws turned out to be a passage into a whole other world. We were just in time too, a true dawn beginning to spread across the city. My real saviour swept inside and I followed, having to make a tight squeeze through the stone creature’s throat before it opened into a great spire, bells and pulleys stilled and waiting for humans to call forth their song so they could wail and creak across the sunrise. What kind of bat saw fit to make a home in such a noisy place?

He led me deeper into the spire and down, and as we descended the temperature rose.

“You should spend the day here. Perhaps two,” he said, and we slowed as the tower opened into a wide chamber, a tangle of beams and struts. I could see evidence of other bats, hundreds of them, in the worn scratches pockmarking the dry wood (and, frankly, other messes). He waved me on a little further and soon we entered a secondary chamber, much smaller and much warmer.

Heat must have been wafting up from somewhere below, where ever the humans might dwell, and so I once more had all the time in the world. I roosted beside him, dangling happily with my claws finally buried in something more comfortable than wind-blasted concrete.

“Thanks for saving my hide back there, um-”

“Zephyr.”

“Nuria.”

“I can treat your wings, if you like.”

“I think they’ll heal on their own, but thank you,” I said, yanking out a grey feather that had embedded itself in my hair. All I really wanted was to sleep and to melt into this luscious heat, regardless of how ugly my poor wings would look later on. I couldn't even be bothered to clean away the unreasonable amount of blood I'd ended up shedding. “I’ve survived these sorts of injuries plenty.” Not a lie either. I’d been in much worse scraps before tonight.

“They might scar less.”

“Nevermind!” I chimed, enthusiasm returned. “I’ll take whatever you give me.” (Hey, beauty matters, but this time my mind was on tissue dexterity and not looks.)

Zephyr smiled, a happiness that lifted right into his eyes, but I knew he didn’t quite see me. Cataracts, I suppose, and I hoped never to live long enough to develop them. Sound just wasn’t enough for me.

He returned sometime later, chewing a leaf into a thick paste and asking me to move my wings this way and that. The activity seemed to jog my brain into action as well.

“What’s all this about bats killing pigeons?” I asked. I’d stuffed the feather back into my hair. A memento to which I would add at the first chance, once I was well enough to seek some small vengeance for the unnecessary humiliation.

“You tell me.”

“I haven’t killed any pigeons.” Yet. “They said a Silverwing was killing them. But they’re tiny, aren’t they?”

“About as small as I am,” Zephyr said, pulling back when I flinched at the potion dripping onto my skin. I sniffed it curiously before letting him continue.

“Right.”

How in the hell did Silverwings kill pigeons then? Boggling. Then again, the birds seemed mentally defective. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d imagined the entire affair, perhaps seeing the gargoyle’s shadows and thinking the stone had come to life. Except...

“There are others in the city like you,” Zephyr said, as if he’d reached into my mind and plucked out the obvious. However, there was hardly any time between me emerging from the jungle and those who came before me, was there? Had the humans just discovered the grate was gone later? Or were the pigeons mistaken when they said two nights ago?

I could have sworn all the racket tonight was the others toiling away at the vent, trying to dig their way out like eager moles.

This meant they were Vampyrum. Must be. Assuming the birds weren’t insane (still an option). Exiles who’d come north? Had that useless prophet driven even more people to their wits end? Were I important (or not so humble), I might have feared a search party had been sent to capture me with a far less pleasant outcome than the humans’ needles. But very few people were worth being hunted down across such a distance. In fact, beyond the royal family, I couldn’t imagine that nightmare giving a damn so long as we didn’t come limping back. And the current royal family were sycophants who I’d so enjoy seeing rot; they were not likely candidates for betrayal, subterfuge, and flight.

So if I had unknowingly shared my prison with other Vampyrum then they would be lost souls like me. If only I’d gotten into that room sooner!

But who cares. Company was good medicine for useless regret. Loud though my neighbour had been, I’d at least be among friends who’d made an enemy of the current ruling class. What wonderful luck last night was turning out to be!

“You should sleep for awhile,” Zephyr said.

I examined his work. It felt like my skin was tightening, rather unpleasant to imagine, but it was just his mulched up potion drying. If I’d paid more attention to what it looked like, that could have become useful knowledge for later, what with the flora up here being quite alien to me. (Alien and _barren_. Everything here was weedy, not just the animals.)

“Here,” he said, pushing another leaf into my claws. “Chew on a bit of it. It helps with sleep.”

“You’re not trying to poison me, are you?” I took a bite. Utterly tasteless; unpleasantly textured.

“If I said yes, would you believe me?”

“Good point.”

It wasn’t long until a blackness spread across my mind. Dreamless sleep? I’d eat a whole shrub for it.

***

Well, eating a shrub would be unnecessary, as I found out in the evening, plagued by confusing visions of tiny bats swarming above a canopy flushed with the new growth of the wet season, singing something over and over that I couldn’t make out. They flew in tight circles, spiraling around like one entity. 

Probably just a sign that I was in a state of strategic starvation, let’s call it. I hadn’t had bat meat in a very long time, and the chances were I wouldn’t again if I stuck around here. (Some weak minded people might think this a great tragedy. I on the other wing saw it as an opportunity. Now a wise bat might say playing the long game in a frozen wasteland was flirting with disaster. That it was important to seize the present by the jugular and think not of the future lest winter make the future brief. Ever unwise, I thought this too short sighted.) As my stomach gurgled and I told it to shut up, I flexed my wings to shake out the stiffness.

Nicely healed, if I do say so myself, with only a slight ache lingering.

“You’re hungry.”

I flinched, seeking the old bat’s disembodied voice, not finding him, instead seeing a pile of shuddering leaves. His white ears popped up from the horde.

“You must be,” he said. “You’ve been asleep for two nights.”

“ _What! Hmm,_ no, I’m alright,” I said, surveying the room as if I’d not just shrieked, finding more and more evidence of long term, and lonely, habitation. “Do you live here year round?”

“Yes.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. (I’m a hardy one, you know.) “I’d rather not take from your food stores if you live here through the winter.”

“I appreciate that,” he said with a smile.

“Though this does seem like a swanky location, doesn’t it?”

So I dropped from the rafter, spiraling into the depths of the cathedral itself.

Zephyr followed, and as the spire continued to widen, occasionally blockaded by floors the humans had constructed, he led me through old and secret passages known only to bats for other creatures dared not dwell in this holy place.

The spire was truly massive, and then suddenly it ended, and I banked when I came upon them. Humans. We landed to watch, our grip loosening plaster dust. Several stories above them, nestled in the arched ceiling, the humans seemed tiny, nothing like the destructive giants who visited me each night. I glanced at my feet. Unknowingly I’d sunk my claws into the face of an old woman who was squished flat into the plaster.

“A painting,” Zephyr told me.

“I know.” The pyramids had paintings. Some of the pyramids, at least. Although many had become reclaimed by the land, free from human interference, and without the people their paintings faded. Our stories, however, constructed of sound and sung many times over persevered. As you can probably guess, we Vampyrum are a truly superior species than these two legged weirdos on any day.

We’d entered a chasm lined by arching windows the same as I’d seen coming in, and cylindrical lanterns suspended from the ceiling cast ghostly shadows on the people below. Only one of them was speaking and in a language unfamiliar to me. Not that I was particularly good at understanding human gibberish (see: the man beyond the glass), but theirs had a different vibration to it than the southern people I’d encountered in my travels. They sat together in perfectly organized rows, on wooden pews, though with plenty of gaps. I imagined all of the seats filled, hundreds of them at once, a great sea of humanity. I might have found it fascinating, did I not find them so hopelessly vulgar.

They began to sing then on some queue from the elder human and Zephyr’s eyes were closed, listening to their eerie, rumbling music.

Watching him, even with his strange reverence for these humans, his kindness caused me a small measure of guilt. Another me might have made a meal of him. Yet here he was, a perfect stranger offering medicine and aid simply because I'd needed it.

I wondered what the humans here prayed for, in this light spun temple of theirs.

“There’s a war in the south,” Zephyr said suddenly.

“Hmm?” But time took me back suddenly, to the blackened and pockmarked rubble of a human city, the first I’d ever flown over. How different it had looked. How by night it was lit by fire, not the soft glow of artificial suns. At the time I hadn’t put together what was happening. Maybe he thought this was what had displaced me.

“I saw it coming north.”

“You have a band,” he said.

Yes, and a beautiful one. Bright silver, it caught the light like a mirror, reflecting colour. Had it not represented something so horrific, maybe I'd see it similarly to the pigeon feathers I had now artfully woven into my hair.

“The humans here gave it to me, when they ca- found me wandering,” I said. Hate them though I did, Zephyr seemed to have some reverence for the vile species and what reason for me to sully it save my own catharsis at his expense. “They saved my life. If they hadn’t found me, I probably would have frozen to death.”

The best lies ring with some truth. And here there was the truth I so dearly hated to admit. The humans had saved my life. The cold of the north was far deeper than anything I’d imagined, than anything I’d ever been told. The stories we made up as pups and the make believe games we played might have contained the haunting myths of wings blackened by ice and bodies frozen like stone but we took those as exaggeration meant to scare children into staying close to the pyramid, close to home, rather than roam afar into places unknown.

For the Vampyrum it is not usual to travel so far afield. I was an anomaly, and my reluctance to stick around ensured my continued existence.

“It will be difficult for you to survive the winter. I can hear how thin your fur is,” he said. “You might find yourself relying on the humans again, in ways you don’t expect.”

Sure. In an alternate universe. Not this one.

“There is something different about your band to others I’ve heard too.”

“Bats here are banded?” What pity for them.

“They are," he said. “But their bands don’t reverberate in quite the same way. They’re not hollow.”

“Just special I guess.”

I didn’t like this. At all. Was there something dormant in it? Would it come alive and murder me as I slept? Human machinery was as clever as their conniving minds. What if it had been meant to keep me in the jungle like some abhorrent snake, weaving and creeping its way through the undergrowth?

Aw yes, so many gruesome possibilities.

“Nothing’s happened yet,” I told him. “It’s probably nothing important. And it’s probably time I head out.”

“The skies are closed. Do you know what that means?”

“Not particularly,” I admitted. How did one close the skies except by tearing them out of the very heavens themselves?

“The owls have made a decree that any bat seen in flight will be put to death, no matter if the sun is up or down.”

Uh-huh. As if they could stop me. But the truth of it washed over me quickly, the greater implications. Two different implications. The first, bats here must not be prey for other animals. How else would this decree make sense otherwise? And thinking about it now, nothing had made a go at me until tonight. At first I’d thought it might be my size, I was a formidable opponent and if I was going out I’d go out in a blaze of glory, perhaps not killing but permanently crippling whoever thought to make a nice meal out of me. But I’d passed the nests of eagles, hollows of owls, and the worn paths of wolves, the haunts of giant tawny cats all in a time when food was growing more and more scarce. Once clearing the jungle, I’d not been too careful about who might pick a fight with me or where I wandered, especially in those first days with my thoughts an unholy miasma.

It was a very strange protection the bats of the north were privileged with.

Then there was the second implication, if bats weren’t prey then, but also weren’t prey _now_.

“That’s-”

“Genocide. I know,” Zephyr said calmly, as if it was a bit of history he had no personal investment in.

Really, had there been any point in leaving home at all if this is what I was met with?

“Fortunately, many of us are already hibernating and won’t need to worry until Spring,” he added. “It may blow over by then if the killings stop.”

All fine and good, if you assumed the murderers were just a couple bats with claws to grind. We both knew this wasn’t the case. They were carnivores; they were doing what we carnivores do when our stomachs twinge. Unless they decided to go home, which wasn’t something exiles were ever keen on.

This was inconvenient for me as well.

What in the hell was I to eat if chomping on something as banal as a pigeon was retaliated with genocide? Not that it necessarily affected me too strongly; I had no ties to this place. I was ready to travel to the ends of the Earth and back again on one grand, endless adventure. Yet for the moment I didn’t want to be attacked while innocently browsing around for something meatier than white mice. I'd been discreet thus far. Unharassed. Now? There could be more watchful eyes than before.

Punishment outweighing the crime, much? (Some be tempted to point out my hypocrisy, what with my plans to eat the first pigeon I saw. The difference? I was actually going to consume the creature. Not leave it to rot as some kind of grim message.)

I wondered what the birds up here ate. Fish, perhaps? Something that couldn’t hold a grudge?

No, it seemed better and better in this situation to find myself some allies to travel with, even if they didn’t know the lay of the land.

“I want to find the other bat, or bats, who were in the building with me,” I said, realizing for the first time that with Zephyr’s illusion I’d made an assumption. I’d never seen deep into the other jungle. Who knew how many people resided within it? Hopefully several. Let’s see how appealing murder was when aimed at the children of Cama Zotz!

“Perhaps I can help with that,” Zephyr said.

“You’ve seen them pass?”

“Come with me.”

We returned to the silent and slumbering bells, to the heart of the cathedral’s spire.

Then he opened his wings, his ears swiveling to and fro as if catching sounds in another place, another time. 

His wings turned dark as a moonless sky.

Stars began to light, twinkling, growing brighter.

I’d only see one other person calling a prophecy forth like this, and awesome though it looked it made my skin crawl.

Feeling rather nauseous, and before I could actually hear what he was about to say, I rose among the beams and bells, roosting far above. But without wishing to, I caught some of his vision.

After a moment Zephyr’s eyes cleared. The strange glow within his wings fading.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said, hanging beside me.

“You can only see life,” I said. “I knew someone who could only see death.”

“You believe their sight to be a tragedy.”

“I believe both to be tragedies.”

I was a lot keener on leaving now, shuffling irritably and he didn’t disregard it. Simply nodded at me peacefully. Soon we were back inside the gargoyle’s throat, wind cold on our faces.

“Nuria, there will be some hard choices ahead of you.”

“I would expect to hear nothing less from a prophet of Ix Chel," I said with a smile. 

“Keep it in mind. Now, do not tarry, do not stop, not until the city lights are well behind you. The path you need take is to the south, the valley in the shadow of the mountains.”

I hated prophecies. I'd been ready to just heave to and find the others on my own whim. I couldn't deny this one snippet of knowledge was worth the trouble.

“My dear Zephyr, this year has been nothing if not difficult. I suspect we won’t meet again?”

“You’d be correct. Keep your vision clear.”

On the precipice of the gargoyle’s stone maw, I gave one last glance over my shoulder. “And yours.”

Then I fell, opening my wings with one delighted and celebratory barrel roll, letting the night carry me like she always did. The stars lay hidden behind pink clouds, the echo of human activity rumbled ceaselessly below, and the future was as it should be.

For the most part.

A mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally we're about to meet the gang. Team Let's Find Hibernaculum.


	4. Midnight Cheer

  
I didn’t tarry, I didn’t stop, and I pestered no birds, passing stealthily and hungrily by. It was not yet midnight, so I had plenty of time to explore when the valley south of that cursed city sprawled endlessly and overwhelmingly across the horizon. 

  
With the glow of the humanity behind me, the valley basin was a rich swath of darkness. And for the most part a silent one. Shrivelling leaves crackled as the wind rubbed them together and the canopy was defoliating, the trees readying themselves for sleep. Something might creak softly below, like a whisper, animal or the wilds or simply the hushed breaths of ghosts. The mountains beyond were dwarfed by the basin’s vastness, which told me how far away they must be. They were a jagged cut of brilliant white, twins peaks of tumbled rock and snow. Nothing about them looked friendly or inviting, and they fenced in the valley. Luckily, this meant they fenced in the bats who I’d be looking for. Who would fly over a blizzardy mountain? No one, that’s who.

  
Towards the mountain’s foothills a second wash of light blazed up into the sky. Just another human habitation, or I assumed it must be for what else could cut through Ix Chel’s heavens and brighten the forest so dramatically as to be glimpsed from such a distance? From here it was nothing save a faint aura, yet I knew the further I wandered that it would grow in strength like the rising of the sun.

  
Save for that which lurked far below, the skies were clear. As I spiralled higher into the gloom, most of my joy long since burned out, I ran some of my conversations with Zephyr over in my head. Whether or not I'd overshared. The strange warnings he'd given me. The many complications. Our brief (and currently undocumented, because winter is vile), discussion of what was to come with winter after he'd commented on my innate lack of fluff.

  
As well as my reluctance to take food from a hermit. 

  
Why hadn’t I eaten before leaving the jungle! A useless whinge, I know. For who knew that would have been the day of my escape? 

  
That was no consolation now. 

  
How could it be that the entire world felt so empty, so lonely? 

  
Temporarily I decided to turn my mind away from locating the others and back to the more immediate problem dogging me. They need to eat too, I figured, and that would slow them down. 

  
So I looped around, scouting amid the shadows for anything scurrying or scuttling or tucking in for bed. 

  
Relief came another hour in. Or so I thought. 

  
As I drifted through the night, gliding between branches, just me, myself, and the whistle of the wind, a shadow passed over the moon. Not just any shadow either. A bird. A very large one. I grinned, ready to explode out of the trees, when an eerie keening stopped me so dead I dropped several feet. 

  
Little dots spanned the horizon, swarming about like a miasma of confused mosquitoes. As I followed the owl it was quickly joined by several others travelling in the strangest formation I’d ever seen, patterned like an arrowhead. From my sheltered location I had to squint to understand what exactly I was seeing as the formation was joined by other figures until a large unit had gathered.

  
It took another moment for my brain to kick into action, to know that the tiny mosquitoes were a colony of bats, that the birds were singlemindedly focused on their prey.   
I counted thirty two. 

  
Two owls I might be able to rough up. Thirty two would add me to the body count in a matter of moments, even with the aid of hundreds of runts. There was no question, for try though these little bats might, even while being mobbed the owls were a force of unrivalled destruction.

  
It was slaughter. 

  
I knew the names for these ones. They were Brightwings and the closer I came the better I could hear their pleas, how they didn’t understand what was happening, or why their colony was surrounded by sudden execution. 

  
Zephyr was wrong. And word wasn’t travelling to everyone.

  
Mothers and pups were making mad dash for the forest, some smashing through the canopy with their children clinging to their bellies. Others were herded back by the owls who were positioned on the outskirts of the colony.

  
They didn’t always kill them outright, though sometimes a talon impaled or shredded simply for its powerful grip and vicious sharpness. They broke arms or snapped finger bones like dry twigs, often ripping off wings entirely. The result was the same: mangled bats unable to stay aloft falling to their deaths, bleeding out on the forest floor, scattered in the tops of trees.

  
My blood boiled. It was not just the senseless brutality and scale of the whole affair, but at my utter impotence to do anything except behold their sadism from a distance. Back home we would have captured these murderers and offered them to Zotz. And maybe then I would finally be happy that our prophet was a raving fanatic. The best I could offer would be to soar carefully through the forest and take the lives of whoever was in their slow and agonizing death throes.

  
I might have wasted energy and done it too. Maybe taken a nibble when everyone was gone. (It was dreadfully wasteful not to.)

  
Alas, it was not my destiny.

  
A screech like nails across ice, like hail on glass, rose above the screams and the Brightwing battle cries, loud, close, behind me…

  
Hello, self preservation! 

  
I plummeted into the leafy forest, introspection disregarded, battering myself on needled evergreens and the cold-hardened branches of autumn dormancy. Once again, they must not have caught a good glimpse of me with a single solider trying to ride my tail. I was simply an escaping Brightwing; a harbinger to other colonies.

  
Reckless and blindly I went crashing into the dense leaf litter, burrowing in as the owl's silent wings passed, enveloped by the scent of must and mould. And now, to wait. I knew it would be safe to leave when the wailing of the dying and the desperate finally stopped.

  
It wasn’t a long wait. Soon only the soft whimpers of the survivors remained (if you could call a few more seconds of life surviving). Yet as owls could stalk silent and unseen, I hid an extra hour for good measure. In the meantime, I tried to decide if it would hurt to focus both my anger and starvation on that one species alone. Would eating a few owls make a difference at this point? 

  
By the time the forest was back to its eerie silence, its consuming sense of abandonment, the last shreds of enthusiasm had left me. I dug out of the leaves, kneeling on the forest floor, final witness to what remained. Maybe a part of me should have felt some relief; here was an opportunity to fend off starvation one night more. But seeing the mangled Brightwings, their torn wings sprinkled over the treetops? I felt strangely apathetic towards my own fate. 

  
So I sat in silence among the frosty leaves, as if in a vigil. 

  
And decided to kill the next bird I saw. 

  
***

  
Like many pursuits, this plan too went astray with all the evening’s commotion quelled and the grim silence overtaking the land once more. It was as if the forest itself knew, with all its creatures, what had been about to transpire so that countless breaths were held and waiting. 

  
I was sluggish in my flight now, sticking close to the trees, exhaustion heaving. Maybe it would be better to just give in and find a comfy (contextually; there is no comfort in a frozen wasteland) place to sleep, try again tomorrow when everyone had an opportunity to relax and nature returned to its usual rhythms. Hunting now seemed abysmally unlikely with everything on edge and my fellow Vampyrum were surely cautious as well, with such a monumental conspiracy of owls to beleaguer them. At this point chances were high that I wouldn’t find them, the best I could hope for is for them to stumble upon me by the turn of fate.

  
Yup. Slim chances. And I wasn’t in a gambling mood. 

  
A promising patch of darkness, likely a rock face, was visible about a thousand wing beats away and I set course for it when a familiar scent made my nose wriggle happily.

  
Food! Finally. 

  
And hopefully not more Brightwings for it was still too faint for me to distinguish what sort of critter I might be smelling. Carrion, hopefully, or they’d be in for a fight. I wheeled east, kept low, and came upon this stroke of fortune quick enough.

  
The scent was an owl, not long dead, in the midst of slowly disappearing down the gullet of another bat as he nibbled away at it (so perfect; once again, Zotz must be looking out for me, in so many ways). And if I squinted just the right way I'd call him a pigeon, this southern bat who'd helped me achieve freedom. Was there a meaningful difference? 

  
Now, there’s cannibalism and then there’s cannibalism, and well into four nights of starvation and retreat I didn’t care who had indirectly saved me from that wretched garden, that alluring and deceptive paradise, only that there was a fresh carcass nearby, I'd seen no acceptable prey, and I had every intention of relieving him of their evening meal. And if I happened to kill him in the process, more food for me.

  
It is said that when you take the life of another bat, some of their life, their power, is carried forward within you for all your days. A great flow of energy.

  
It’s also said that bat flesh is delicious, so who are you to believe?

  
I didn’t have a preference. This was nothing deeper than an opportunity. 

  
I'd say a prayer for the poor dear, hope his soul would wiggle free of his meaty body with speed, but I was far too hungry, my stomach clenching and gurgling with ferocious need.   
With a cheerful cry to announce myself, I plummeted towards him like a ravenous hailstone, singularly bent on sinking my teeth into the bird he'd so charitably slain for me. And him, too. If he didn't move aside.

The pigeon-bat wailed, having no time to shuffle aside before I made contact and I ripped him out of the tree, claws sinking through his grey mane and into the skin below.

  
“Goth!” 

  
Oh, Zotz.

  
Ever had a meteor drop out of the heavens and hurl you into a tree? 

  
Not nice. At least not for the pigeon-bat still in my tender grasp, cushioning my impact so that rather than being injured myself he took the blunt of the attack. He crawled out from under me with an aching groan as I was dragged backwards.

  
A mewling creature if ever I saw one, pale and stout, with a dazed expression on his face that seemed permanently ingrained. His lip curled up in a snarl he hopped away, rubbing his back and licking clean a bleeding shoulder. 

  
I couldn’t move and I couldn’t see what had grabbed my neck so that I was forced to lay on the branch of this leafless oak, staring irritably at a distant tangle of brambles and dying shrubbery. I almost hissed, a fresh pain shooting through my abdomen from where the propeller had struck. It was a moment before I realized my attacker was standing on the small of my back, probably looking like the smuggest prat the entire continent had to offer.

  
“That would be my brother-in-law you’re chewing on,” an unpleasantly familiar voice said behind me.

As I glanced over my shoulder, looking rather sheepish, Goth jumped off, but immediately scooped me up so that I was dangling off the branch, crushing my banded wrist between his claws. He frowned, as if appraising the glittering ring of metal.

  
“Oh. Eh, well, he looked like a pigeon from afar.” (Without the shock of hearing this swine’s name so unexpectedly, in such a strange place, I wouldn’t have been caught off-guard and I wouldn’t be debasing myself here, let me assure you.)

  
“Don’t you recognize who I am, senorita?” he asked, mouth twitching up in a toothy smile.

  
“Should I?” I said innocently, and spared him the inflection of sarcasm. A bit of arrogance this. Of course I recognized him. The moment his fat wings were out of my face. I’d been watching him from a distance half my life. We all had. 

  
He laughed. “And you are?”

  
“Nuria of Nowhere, traveller extraordinaire.” 

  
I kept my tone light yet without my usual degree of cheer. He was eyeing my teeth as I was eyeing his arm and deciding whether or not to bite my way free. Goth’s grip relaxed and he placed me back onto the branch. Masking irritation, I crept out from under him, right into the glaring mug of the bat I’d so adeptly and joyfully tried to maim. 

  
What an entrance! What stones life throws at you! Once again, my luck was on a down turn.

  
“Say hello to our sister, Throbb,” he said. 

  
The smaller bat snorted. 

  
Not a literal sister, of course. I’d have ritualistically offed myself long ago if I were so cursed as that. He simply meant we were one people adrift. Despite that, I almost made a face of disgust. Eugh. 

  
“Charming name,” I said. Speaking of sisters, however, Goth’s must have chosen a mate, and he wasn’t too keen on me at the moment. Well how was I supposed to know who I was about to throw wings with!

  
“A traveller, you say,” Goth mused. “But I see you are banded. I might be tempted to think you have escaped some place. What do you think, Throbb?”

  
“Ungrateful, ********************!”

  
*So marks a rather colourful and imaginative display of our language that from looking at Throbb I wouldn’t think he’d have the talent for. Politeness compels me to spare you. Just trust me that it was magical.

  
“Shut it, pigeon,” I clapped back.

  
“I’d think you should be thanking us,” Goth said, still mildly amused. 

  
Me? Not so much.

  
“For what? Depriving me of breakfast?”

  
Chuckling, he glanced at Throbb, and then beyond him, as if there was something of interest over my head.

  
And unbeknownst to me we had a secondary audience. Two little bats peered around a narrow branch. One’s eyes wide with curiosity. The other’s narrow with suspicion and shock. With a pang of sympathy, I recognized her as a Brightwing. 

  
“Um, hello,” I said as they smiled awkwardly. 

  
“Your accent is strange,” Throbb interjected. Keen, if late, observations. Also, annoying. 

  
“Yes, well, I’ve been gone awhile,” I said absently, before roosting beside the Brightwing. She shuffled away from me, taking several hops along the branch. Of course she would though, after being in such a massacre. Even in the south, little bats fear us. But I was happy to see at least one soul survived. “I watched all of it happen. Was your family with you?”

  
“I haven’t seen my family since Spring,” she said quietly. 

  
“Marina’s been travelling with me,” the other northerner said, smiling widely, and she shot him a look I couldn’t quite understand. 

  
“So you weren’t part of-” I looked back towards the city. 

  
“Part of what?”

  
Strange. 

  
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Just... confused for a moment.” 

  
“Did you get separated?” the littlest bat asked me.

  
“What, from them? Never met them in my life. I’m just a girl on an adventure.”

  
“How interesting for you to be all the way up here,” Goth remarked. 

  
“If you’re trying to get home, you could come with us too. We’re all heading south to find my colony.”

  
“Shade is helping us with the stars,” Goth confirmed, nodding solemnly. “Unless, perhaps, you are familiar with them?”

  
“Hmm?”

  
“Having travelled so far on your own,” he said. “Surely you saw the stars change?”

  
“They’re as strange to me as to you, I'm afraid. Look at them. That looks like a crane,” I said, gesturing dismissively at the north star, the bear, before pointing at a second constellation. “And that looks like a stick.” 

  
It’s important, as an exile, to know your norths and your souths, your spirit bears and your celestial wolves and all the directions in-between. I'd watched the stars change with interest. Why the sun and the moon weren’t adequate for Goth's purposes, to simply head south of this frosty, quickly going barren apocalypse was a mystery. Either he was an idiot or a liar. Knowing much better, I knew he was no idiot. But why?

  
Regardless of my curiosity towards the quartet’s machinations, I was intent on staying northbound, so guiding my fellow Vampyrum south wasn’t in my repertoire. 

  
“You’re welcome to come with us,” the small northerner said. Again, Marina’s eyes widened briefly, though he failed to notice. 

  
I smiled at the little one, Shade, but my mind was being pulled in multiple directions, like my own stomach, like the implications of Goth's presence and his sister’s future. But mostly I was fed up with starvation when there was food dangling a mere stretch below that Throbb occasionally cast glances at and Marina frequently wrinkled her nose at as if the scent were offensive to her.

  
“I wouldn’t,” Goth said, as I stared longingly at the remains of the owl, deliciously impaled below.

  
“You know what, O’ Prince, I haven’t eaten for four days now, I think I deserve a break and if he’s just ignoring it!” I wheeled suddenly on Throbb. “Why _are_ you ignoring it by the way?”

  
“So you do recognize me!” Goth cried with a chuckle, feeling rather victorious. I nearly slapped him out of the tree. 

  
“Of course I recognize you! What do you think I am, a sloth? You’re like a dart frog. Completely f-”

  
“So you do know each other?” Marina asked, raising an eyebrow.

  
“No,” we said together. 

  
Annoyed, I flew up to a branch above them, listening from a distance, hoping they’d eventually be on their way and leave at least something of that carcass behind. I’d take bones at this point. Maybe moths. But I hadn’t seen a single one of them either.   
How did anyone thrive up here!

  
Find the other Vampyrum. Mission accomplished. And oh how miserable, oh what rotten damned luck. 

  
“Well,” Shade said. “You’re welcome to come anyway.”

  
“Shade!” Marina cried. 

  
“I suppose some company might not be horrible," I said after a minute, though I still wasn’t committed to sticking around longer than it would take to thieve that owl carcass and disappear. “But I think I'll be spending the winter exploring the north. By the way, did you know the skies are closed? Some blasted pigeons tried to peck my wings off couple nights ago.”

  
This seemed to be the right thing to say, because Shade nodded enthusiastically. “Us, too!”  
What a thing to be so cheery about! Near death experiences. 

  
“Are you from the city?”

  
“Just for our migration, we fly over it.”

  
“How far is it? This migrating?”

  
“I don’t really know,” Shade said, shivering as a gust of wind ruffled his hair. “This is my first time.” 

  
“Is it always so cold here?” Throbb whined.

  
“Just in winter. That’s why we’re migrating south,” Shade explained, eyes lighting up. “That’s why we’re trying to find my colony’s Hibernaculum.”

  
“What is Hibernaculum?” he asked. Still a pigeon after all. Unpleasant, that’s what it was. I took it the quartet had, like me, focused on escaping the tyranny of sky rats rather than making nice with one another. Perhaps if I encouraged this swapping of tales I could drop quickly upon the owl, snatch it, and lose Goth in the undergrowth. 

  
“It’s where we sleep until the Spring comes and it warms up again.” 

  
“How long are your winters?” Goth asked tentatively, as if the season itself was vulgar to him. Frankly, I agreed.

“Four months.”

  
“How unusual,” Goth said. “Bats who sleep for months.” 

  
“I know, right!” Shade was nodding enthusiastically again, clearly believing it was a deranged concept. “But my mother says it’s too cold to be outside all winter and the insects go away, so we spend the season in caves where it’s warm.”

  
Indeed, and it took me back to some of Zephyr’s other warnings. His description of torpor, for instance. Basically, I took it to mean one quite simple thing- 

  
“How will you survive up here in the open, Nuria?” Marina asked, clearly concerned. 

  
I wouldn’t. Thus you see my problem. 

  
“I'll figure it out, I'm sure. Might head back to the city. Lots of warm places there.”  
“Crazy,” Throbb said to himself. 

  
“Hmm. Where we are from,” Goth began. “It is warm and sunny all year round. Makes a bat grow to a reasonable size.”

  
Laughing, very pleased with himself, he flared his wings, displaying their size as much as the muscles of his chest defined even beneath his fur. Impressive stuff, too. As impressive as his ego. “As a prince, I am a magnificent specimen, even by my colony’s standards.”  
But he wasn’t wrong. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter. Below me, Throbb tried to disguise his cackle with a hacking cough. Shade beamed. Marina discreetly rolled her eyes with a near silent scoff. 

  
“How’d you end up so far from home?” she asked. 

  
Goth frowned, glanced at me, and then began his own story. His and Throbb’s, of their time in the false jungle. It echoed mine with abysmal perfection. They’d spent a month clawing and chewing at the concrete around the vent, whenever the humans were gone. Interestingly, they never spoke of other jungles; the never knew they weren’t alone despite my multitude of justified shouting. The only fraction of amusement I got from it was the image of Throbb acting as any kind of guardian or soldier, royal or otherwise. Particularly to Goth, a bat who was the last person needing protection. Not that the pigeon wasn’t physically capable. It’s the chubbier fellows who tend to be unreasonably and deceptively powerful beneath all that fluff, and I wondered if he might be able to overpower his brother if it ever came to an all out brawl. Voxzaco wouldn’t let just anyone marry into that precious dynasty. 

  
The worst thing about the whole affair was that humans had invaded our homeland, waded into the wilderness and kidnapped our people. Did it concern Goth that they may have taken others, that we might not have been alone? I didn’t ask. None of us had any intention of going back to find out. 

  
I'd say it was Goth’s duty, as the protector of his people, did I not know what horrors lived within if he was captured, or how impossible it would be to get back inside undetected by the tricksome humans. 

  
“What’s a jungle?” Shade asked. 

  
“A jungle?” Goth exhaled contently, remembering with a chuckle, nearly knocking Throbb off the branch as his wings snapped open again. “A jungle is an explosion of colour, born in the heat and the sun! We live as we choose in our jungle, with the warmth on our wings and our bellies never empty. We eat only the most succulents of small birds, the tastiest of lizards, and other small animals.” 

  
(Sure, until some nasty human interferes.)

  
But ever the optimist, he snapped his teeth in Shade’s face with a wicked smile and a glint in his bright eyes. “And the insects are so plump, so wondrous, two or three could feed you for a night.”

  
I’d never heard someone wax poetic with more flare than myself. A touch of jealousy? Of course not.

  
A soft wind picked up again, lifting my hair and sending a chill rippling through my fur. It carried the scent of coming rain, but also the delightful sweetness of blood and I glanced at the owl carcass again, wondering if Goth was such a swine that he'd interfere if I openly climbed down to get it. 

  
“I wouldn’t,” he said again, following my gaze.

  
I didn’t need to take this! I was Nuria of Nowhere! Not a subject of the jungle or anyone else. 

“ _Lovely_ to meet you at last,” I said, dropping away. “I’ve some hibernating to do.”

  
This was turning out to be the forth most agitating night of my life, all the enthusiasm for company that I’d nursed in Zephyr’s cathedral dashed against a rock like a mouse’s miserable brains. Not only was I alone, again, the only people who might have empathy for the last month of my life weren’t exiles, they were the last bats I’d ever have hoped to stumble on. Did the universe despise me so much! I would have taken literally anyone else. An elder two steps from death who I might only exchange a sentence with before Zotz took their soul; a pup with hardly any sense or vocabulary. I didn’t care, both were exponentially superior options.

  
No, better to be alone again, find some dank hole to spend the night in and pop out in the morning for a quick and stealthy scouting with the sun to cheer me. This windy midnight could not live up. 

  
I supposed this was one of the choices Zephyr had Seen. Oh, to be a prophet, so sure in the future. 

  
Maybe I should have turned back to the city, found some warm attic to winter in and emerge to steal the occasional sky rat or sewer rat.

  
For now, I took to the heavens, gaining some distance before I dipped below the treeline again. Then, sure I wasn’t followed, I laughed and wheeled back, disguised among the undergrowth.

  
Hey, I was hungry. As if I'd give up carrion so easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A moment of silence for the Brightwing colony. 
> 
> Yet never underestimate the power of noms.
> 
> (Do you know who Nuria's Ix Chel is? :D )


	5. Northbound

The day I left the land that humans call Brazil, keeping the Southern Cross at my tail and always a league ahead of capture and thus identification, I’d been laughing and whooping, satisfied with myself and spitting in the face of grief. It all seemed rather like a fairy tale, happening to someone who wasn’t me. A pup just ahead of danger; painted jaguars and jeweled snakes always at the edge of her vision, these unseen foes biding their time yet never swift enough. She chased the currents of the world, sure of her destination and destiny. 

By the time I’d reached Central America, not yet knowing its name, all that satisfaction had fallen like grimy stars. Not sure of what came next, the ocean coast kept me sated with mollusks and fish and the briny air carried me further and further from a dark pyramid which the Earth herself had tried and failed to swallow before our people had the misfortune of arriving. The single event that shook and shaped my life. 

Whenever had a fairy tale had a truly joyous ending? 

As the constellations of my past began to retreat, soon I'd passed well outside the range of the only world I'd ever known. Here in the north I quickly found that the blackened and war-torn buildings of my homeland were nothing but a dream. Human life carried on in its own fashion. Had I a been stupider bat, I imagined I would have thought the southern humans were simply aesthetically insane. Humans are naturally mixed up in their priorities. But I am an unwise bat, not a stupid one, and no animal would set their own homes ablaze. I did not know who set the cities of Brazil alight so that they turned the skies red by night and polluted the air with an acrid, throat searing smoke. If there’d been the opportunity to speak with other bats as I fled, I don’t imagine I would have asked. 

I’d never know. I’d never go home.

But always there are exceptions to insanity, and too often does my memory remind me of a prophet with a mad vision and a long lost pyramid with painted walls and glittering gems and world shaking stories. For a story in a sacred place is so easy to harness, so easy to manipulate. 

The proof of Ix Chel’s death, they said. The absolute end of duality. Sounds rather demented, doesn’t it?

And I am to believe I am the fanatic in this story? How preposterous!

Blatant and enthusiastic destruction of property wasn’t fanaticism it was pure sensibility in a case such as this. 

I shook this musing out of my head as I listened to Goth telling the little bats more stories of our homeland and watched Throbb’s head bob in time to every beat, as if to confirm what Goth was saying was real, though I could see how skeptical Marina continued to be. And to be honest, were I a runt existing only in this undesirable northern bubble, giants with fantastical tales of endless warmth and delicious, unending food would sound pretty darn bonkers. 

I was mere wingtips away from the still bleeding owl, listening to its blood’s slow drip onto the red and yellow leaves I was disguised within, me a brown blob amongst the clutter. If I grabbed it now, I had a few options and a few tribulations. 

First, it might get snagged in the brambles and then I’d be in for a fight rather than a quick retreat as was more my style. I needed to lift the damn thing up and off. It would almost have been easier had Throbb resumed his enthusiastic nibbles. 

Second, since I was now below everyone, it was easy for one of the Vampyrum to drop on me. 

So I spent my time examining every possible exit and usable obstacles, still hoping they’d be soon enough on their way.

“Enough about me, what about you?” Goth asked. 

Or not. Come on, already! Midnight wouldn’t last forever and I still needed to hightail it to that bluff I’d seen on the horizon lest I waste time hiding from owls in some damp and moulding log blanketed by the excrement of worms and weasels. 

“Oh, well, we Silverwings live as we choose to, too!”

Yawn. The cushy summer lives of northern youth? Not the most exciting gossip.

“Like the law bats can’t look at the sun? Well, I did!” Shade proclaimed proudly, a grin on his wholesome little face. But it fell quickly, thoughtfully, and he muttered, “Even if the owls didn’t like it.”

“Didn’t like it!” Marina shouted. “They burned down your home! They could have killed all of you!”

Well, well, well, perhaps this was going to get interesting! In fact, it might be such a boggling yarn Goth would be too involved to see my ruefully basic plot. 

Shade dove eagerly into his tale, shrugging Marina off. An adventure of dares and wild chases. Of life not lost and justice most vile and colour me surprised.

After awhile I listened to Shade’s story with utter delight. Truly, it was riveting. At least for me, deprived of entertainment as I was. But it was also disturbing as Shade moved away from the proclamation of closed skies and onto the most bizarre event I’d ever heard of. And I’d heard some absolute whoppers when it comes to the folly of mythology (see: Ix Chel’s death; Voxzaco’s ascendance; Goth’s divine right to rule... actually perhaps that’s just the usual bullshit).

I could have spent an entire night laughing if it weren’t so dreadfully depressing, finally coming to understand why a precedent was already established for allowing a Brightwing colony of mothers and pups to be lawfully slaughtered. It was founded on nothing. On a treaty formed around a millennia old fairytale. A fictional battle of global proportions. 

Evidence that this was northern nonsense and a driveling excuse for oppression and control? But for the birds who foolishly attacked me whilst I traversed happily throughout the day, I’d have never known about this decree, this unusual punishment in which bats were banned from Cama Zotz’ sun. 

And why, being beasts themselves, would humans not have involved themselves? Entitled and egotistical as they are, that ought to have been evidence enough!

It went on, growing far wilder than Goth’s own stories. The memories of an Echo Chamber. A Promise from the goddess of the night (of questionable veracity, might I add). I resisted the urge to challenge Goth with this different angle, for he showed no sign of recognition towards who Nocturna might be. I’d figured her out quick enough, months ago. Perhaps this was for the best. He might have torn up their souls telling them she was dead when they so clearly needed something to hold on to.

“And that’s why we have to fly at night,” Shade said, his saga at an end.

Despite the grandiose delusions of birds and beasts, I wasn’t having it.

“Astonishing inane,” I said, taking a thoughtful bite of owl.

Everyone flinched, peering down to find me in the shadows, echoes bouncing futilely off each obstruction. I burst out of the foliage, snatching the carcass tightly and sailing onto a branch just behind Shade, where Goth would have to force the Silverwing aside to access me. He didn’t move. He wanted this northerner’s happiness (who knew why) and we both knew it. 

“So,” I continued, “you were punished for refusing to engage in violence.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I wish I didn't use chapter titles.


	6. Darkest Little Friends

There was a silence so thick I could have cut through it with my fangs and not reached the other side.

Instead I continued to chew on the owl, occasionally picking out feathers and watching them twirl away to the forest floor and the shrubbery in between. A grim but beautiful waterfall. Then finally, as I was about to speak again, Shade nodded.

Throbb and I exchanged looks, me disturbed, him surprisingly appalled. Goth had his head slightly tilted, clearly curious, but was frowning. As I said, we’d never heard of such a battle taking place and believe me it would sound just as deranged to any other southerner. I wondered where the boundary was. When had I crossed from a sane world and into this one.

“Well, the birds called us cowards and the beasts called us traitors,” Shade said after a moment.

“We’re beasts,” Throbb said flatly. “Why not join them?”

Shade shrugged. “Maybe. I'm happy to not be a stupid bird.”

I gave a nod as I swallowed another bite, delicious meat still a little warm on my tongue. “Me as well. Besides, they taste far too good to give up. This happened outside memory, you say?”

“Millennia, yeah.”

“Bitter little things, aren’t they?”

Silence passed between us, as Goth’s curious look congealed into something like barely contained glee. “I could bring an army of my species up from the south and end this persecution once and for all.”

“Whoa, there!” I said, raising my hands to halt the conversation, my owl dropping onto the branch below, nearly bouncing into Shade as he yelped and Marina yanked him aside. Damnit! Oh well, a minor set back.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” I said. “Just, back up a sec. You cannot look at the sun?”

“Were you even listening?” Marina snapped, setting Shade right way up, and I shot her a look of annoyance. Obviously I was or I wouldn’t have interrupted. Why the need to be so rude and abrasive? I hadn’t purposefully dropped the owl!

“But birds don’t eat you at night?”

What was a simple look of impatience turned cold, Marina appraising me as if I were the most ignorant creature alive, as if I ought to know of their customs from birth, through the osmosis of time.

“Where would you get that idea from?”

“A prophet of Ix Chel, in _that_ city,” I said calmly, pointing north. “Birds and beasts ‘can’t war with you at night’. So do they only eat you if you’re out in the sun, because that sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.”

And one that we of Brazil weren’t gifted with. Not that it applied to me. I’m just saying.

“They eat us at night too,” Marina said.

Rarely will you find a situation in which two potential enemies (this would be me and Team Goth) share such a powerful (and ephemeral) moment of bonding over how asinine these northerners were. We were a blend of shock, awe, disgust, and bewilderment all at once. Maybe with a touch of amusement and I realized that they’d shared my misunderstanding with Shade’s confusing story.

“Then what’s the problem!”

“They burned his roost! Were you listening at all?”

“They eat you either way.”

“They don’t try to wipe us out!” Marina snapped, eyes rolling.

“Hmm, yes, I suppose the scale is the issue here.”

“Would you really bring your people north?” Shade asked.

Goth smiled magnanimously, laughing. And God that laugh was perfect. I digress!

“Of course, Shade,” he said.

Aw, yes, drag us into this nonsense. Maybe there was at least one altruistic bone in his body and the light in Shade came alive again. I could only groan. Really this didn’t involve me, yet a small voice of self-preservation said the sudden appearance of hundreds of my own people spat in the face of my entire journey to begin with. And what if some of them decided to stick around long term on _my_ turf? No. Not a chance. There had to be a way to stop this madness.

“Come with us to the jungle,” Goth continued. “You and all your colony, and I’ll call upon my family for help. Your females and children will be safe, and the males can return with us to fight.”

Oh, Zotz, what a nightmare.

What an absolute insult!

I reminded myself this jerk just needed a star map and I had one. Was he really more selfless than I’d imagined or was there some other motivation happening underneath this?

“You’d really do this for us?” Shade asked, eyes wide as the moon. Marina cringed, eyes flicking between the brothers in alarm.

"It would be a great honour to help you return to the light of day, just like Nocturna promised.”

“All without the humans’ help?” Marina asked.

“The humans are not our friend, senorita. Surely you can see that now.”

She couldn’t, despite our tales, which perhaps she struggled or chose not to believe.

Trouble was, I agreed with Goth. It was stupid mythology. Maybe the inciting incident, this banishment, would have plagued us in the south, the Freetails and the Lasionycteris but for my own kind's regular interference. Who dared to challenge us, to control us? We feared no one and nothing! I could see how it hurt Marina though, just as it would hurt Zephyr, and found myself staring at my own band. My usual cynicism must be taking a nap because I knew why I had the band. It was the most obvious thing in the world. Marina had made the mistake of becoming emotionally invested yet still, despite her rudeness, I didn’t want to challenge her.

“Who is to know the minds of humans,” I said. “Perhaps they are not all so evil. Only a few. The sun shall be rising soon. I doubt it is wise to stick around here much longer. There is a bluff to the south where, if you are inclined, you may join me for the night. Or freeze in a log, whatever yanks your vine.”

With that, knowing they’d likely follow for lack of a better plan, I snatched the shreds of owl which remained and set off, smiling secretly to myself.

And they did soon enough. I slowed so that even Shade, labouring as he was, could catch up and keep pace with me, and pointed out the rocky bluff I’d seen on the horizon. It seemed to be in the same direction, or close enough, because Shade grinned and nodded, informing the others. Afterwards I flew at the rear, watching for enemies and preforming unseen acts of aerobatics, spinning and dropping through the sky while everyone chit chatted together.

Call curiosity one of my greatest faults if you will. I couldn’t help but wonder where Goth’s plans might lead, if anywhere. If we stuck together, he couldn’t hide it from me forever. I didn’t trust the prince, not when faced with the logistical nightmare of guiding the Silverwing colony back to Brazil and then back to this nameless place again. I smelled a lie. And as cynical a realist I might be, still it didn’t sit quite right with me to use someone only to dispose of them once they’d served out their purpose. If they turned on the little bats once they knew the stars, surely I could aid in an escape. Providing it didn’t cost me too much.

Besides, I was still young. Older than Marina, certainly, but not by much and what a year of excitement I’d had. Surely, they deserved to have a better end than dying early at the hands of this egotist. Up here, I could take Goth’s life without consequence. He was Prince of Nowhere, as much as I was Nuria of Nowhere.

Then suddenly, banking backwards, Marina turned and smiled sending my thoughts into the mist. I’d come back to them later, after some much needed sleep.

“That looks fun,” she said. A touch awkward, given her previous sentiment and the fact that I still had a mangled corpse in my possession flopping about. Shade had flown ahead to keep pace with Goth, talking of their heroic journey to the jungle, I presumed.

“Did your colony exile you?” After a moment of silence she added, “Your band- it’s silver like mine.”

I eyed her, coming out of a perfect barrel roll.

“Hmm, more like a strategical and timely retreat.”

“I’m sorry I was so cold.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said casually. “You’re gonna make me feel bad for being abrasive to that prick.”

“You don’t like Goth, do you?”

How perceptive.

She was putting it mildly. I wished his entire dynasty dead.

“He’s a stranger to me. Just a name I knew in another time and place,” I said. “Your colony tossed you out? Because of the band?”

She nodded, looking away.

“I was so excited when I first got it. The humans were kind to me, and I thought, I thought it must mean something. But when the elders saw it they said I was cursed. Tainted. And drove me out. Did they really hurt you, like with Goth?”

“They were unkind, Marina,” I said, more stern than I intended. “Maybe not all humans are like that, but I think it is right to be careful of them.”

“Zephyr told me that too.”

“Aw, Zephyr! The prophet. So you have met the old bat. I would take his advice. A wise bat, though I’m no great judge of wisdom.”

“I just can’t believe that all humans are bad.”

I could. After what they’d done, I’d be happy to never see another flat face creep out of the shadows again. And I feared for her.

“I don’t know who else was in that building. But if there were two jungles, there might be others, and that concerns me. Understand, Marina, Goth being here means they went into our homeland, specifically to capture us. That takes planning, to find their way there and back. It is a long way to travel. It wasn’t an accident. So I do not know what to think about Shade’s story or who might have sung it into their Echo Chamber. But I do know that humans should be avoided. Unless you are sure of their intentions, do not seek them out again.”

I thought she agreed, though Shade chose that moment to return, effectively ending our conversation. I could see he was pleased we were getting along better.

“Shade, can we... can we talk?” she asked.

“Yeah!”

“Privately?”

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “I’ll just keep watch.”

So I fell back, just enough to seem out of earshot, but I listened. Don’t shame me. It’s always better to know who you’re dealing with and these were four strangers in a strange place, each with strange tales to tell.

“Shade, I don’t know if I feel safe travelling with meat eaters.”

Oh, dear. That was problems.

“We eat bugs and they’re alive. And that probably grosses them out too.”

“It’s hardly the same thing.”

“Look they can protect the colony. That owl was on us as soon as we left the city. Do you have a better idea?”

“No, but, I don’t know.”

“It’ll be fine,” Shade said. “I promise. Anyway, sun’s almost-”

“Owl!” I screeched, grabbing both bats and diving into the trees as they screamed. Goth and Throbb whipped around and, not looking, dove with me. In my haste to grab them, my meal had tumbled away, lost forever. We all scurried into the cover of a thick spruce, breathing heavily the scent of needles and sap. Wide eyed, I poked my head out between the branches, skimming for any sign of claw or feather. The skies were crystal clear. The forest silent.

“Where is it!” Shade yelped and Marina threw her wings over his mouth to muffle the sound.

“It dropped into the trees,” I whispered. “Must have been hunting.”

“Should we still try for the bluff?”

I nodded solemnly. Heck, yes. I wasn’t sleeping in no chilly tree. “We’ll wait a few minutes. If it doesn’t come up, then it’s eating somewhere.”

And after a short pause we caught our breath and were well on our way. My rock face had a cavern wide enough for the five of us. Marina went in first, and Shade explained she was looking for pellets, signs that owls had roosted here and might return. I felt it unnecessary, a family of birds stood no chance against the might of three Vampyrum, yet I could agree it could save some hassle and wasted effort. I was antsy, impatient. It was too close to dawn for comfort now.

“This place has enough excitement for a life time, doesn’t it!” I declared once inside, rustling my wings and folding them irritably. Even from our dark cave, we knew the sun was soon to creep over the horizon, because the darkness grew more thin, as light reflected off the stone. Oh, how I missed its heat, so close to our reach and yet so far. We crawled deeper, escaping the wind and nestled safely out of sight where nothing would think to make a snack of us as we slumbered. Shade and Marina hung together, chatting before quickly falling into sleep, their breathing evening out. I could have sworn that through the chill their hearts even seemed to slow. I picked a place near the back, where the heat of our bodies might pool and I was as far from my brethren as possible. Throbb had been whining.

Then Goth sidled up to me, draping a wing around my shoulders. He pulled me closer, hissing softly in my ear.

“What owl, senorita?”

Blinking serenely, I smiled.


	7. Ix Chel

Silence passed between us, until Goth put a hand against my cheek so that I’d look at him properly.

I’d say it was tender but it felt rather like a scorned lover who is about to murder their unfaithful beloved and I wasn’t down for that. The corner of his lips twitched up in a smile before he flew to Throbb’s side to sleep, leaving me with my thoughts.

And thoughts I had.

He was more perceptive than he seemed. No trouble. I just needed to be more careful and consider how important my fellow Vampyrums’ attitudes were. I was just indulging a temporary curiosity. Making sure that I wasn’t about to be joined by other undesired southerners by the summertime. And if it kept a couple little sprouts alive on the journey to find out the likelihood of this strange event then that was simply a bonus.

Besides, very few things unnerved me. Even fewer scared me.

I prided myself on how successfully I could channel my spite. Behold the glorious braids and the iridescent pigeon feathers flashing in my hair; it was just unfortunate that upstart bird hadn’t been killed.

As a child, from my memory, Goth prided himself on his capacity for vindictiveness, which is similar to spite (you might be inclined to believe). To my much more cultured taste, it manages to be a whole other beasty. Spite is like the spritely sister of vindictive nature. It is far more lighthearted in nature. Less focused, less obsessive.

So being on the other side of his real anger was not something I was keen on. Nor did I particularly care for being mobbed by a horde of outraged, vapid birds a second time. But I didn’t fear it.

Ominous though he’d been, he didn’t scare me. And watching him sleep the prince was just as helpless and vulnerable as Shade and Marina. I could bite through his jugular before he even knew it and though there would be a skirmish I’d quickly be rid of the annoyance. No more dead Silverwings. No more Vampyrum invading my turf.

It was, I admit, tempting.

Because being dragged south and facing Voxzaco again successfully ruffled me. I supposed Goth could involve himself in the name of vindictiveness. If I wasn’t Nuria of Nowhere, a name and a face among millions who the prince didn’t know.

I was nothing special. People are complicated and messy, and plenty of others had made an enemy of that old priest who'd fashioned himself as Cama Zotz’, well, avatar. Almost. He’d set himself up to be more than your regular prophet, much to the chagrin of the sensible.

Many of us expected Goth to be his natural successor for better or worse. At first I'd thought for the better. How could he be any worse? Voxzaco was a fanatic and the people loved or hated him for it. But I suspected Goth had a lot of growing up to do between now and then, if he even made it halfway home. The adventure might even be in his benefit, an opportunity to experience the world without elders whispering in his egotistical little ears.

And if ever I wanted to go back, I'd need to make sure someone unseated Voxzaco for me or be blessed with a miracle.

Had I been wiser, and less emotional, I could have put aside my innate and immediate hatred for Goth and helped him do just that while making myself more difficult to dispose of.

I wasn’t ready for that.

I was ready to stop him making it home.

Not tonight, no. Not when he was so close to the pigeon-bat. Later, when opportunity called.

Goth muttered something that I strained to hear before realizing, like everyone else, he was sound asleep. He shook his wings uncomfortably, shivering with cold. Heh, weakling. But what came next wiped the smirk off my face with the force of a thousand suns.

I was back back in Zephyr’s cathedral again. Back in the pyramid again. Constellations crawled across the folded membrane of Goth’s wings like maggots. Somehow I doubted this was any kind of wholesome vision about catching a juicy rabbit in the evening.

I never would have imagined things could get any more irritating than they were already becoming.

Prophecies themselves aren’t inherently dangerous things. It’s the muddy interpretations we mortals are prone to which are the problem. Should I startle him awake? That might not pull him out of it but it might make the others ask questions. I decided to leave it.

What was left to do? Nothing, and soon enough, I was asleep.

***

I was the first to wake just before the sunset, the entire cavern turning a dusty rose. Stretching my wings I yawned, fangs glistening. Since it was not yet safe to emerge, I didn’t bother to rouse the others. Leaving Team Hibernaculum in their deadly stillness, I flew to the edge of the cave.

Zotz, I was hungry. What I wouldn’t give to leave while the critters came out for their sunset forage, each tramping through the fading light where they were hidden from sight less sophisticated than my echoes.

“Oh. This is... wrong.”

Outside the cavern, the jungle stretched before me.

I looked back into the cave. Shade and Marina, still as the dead. Goth and Throbb, likewise.

Hmm, perfectly normal, wasn’t it?

There was something odd about this particular dusk that I couldn’t place. The light was faded out, as it should be, and sure it was pink like the sun was refracting through clouds on the horizon, but I couldn’t find the sun. Oh well, probably on the other side of the cave.

And since that was the case, it was night time enough for me to grab a delicious lizard. Perhaps three! Not to share, mind you.

So I dropped out into the open, soaring over the treetops.

It was the chilliest jungle I’d ever been in and after a moment I realized there was no heat and no cold either, just uncomfortable nothingness and utter silence. And I had the sudden and terrible knowledge there would be no food there for me. For anyone.

My heart sped up. What would we do without food? But the anxiety faded quickly; I hadn’t looked. How could I know?

“Come home,” someone said behind me and I flinched violently. I looked over my shoulder, back to the mouth of the cave and the dark bluff.

Since this was home, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to listen. I turned away, disinterested, and soared up, intent to see what was on the other side of the rock face.

“Stay together,” the voice said, above me now. I looked.

Two figures were up there, far away, almost specks in the grey sky.

Goth, I thought. Sneaky little bastard, slipping by me. He was flying beside Shade in some conversation. Marina followed, appearing out of the grey to follow him, Throbb behind her.

There was light on the horizon, but that would be the city, I knew, burning through the night just as it had the day I left.

Then with a jolt, I was back in the cavern. The right cavern. Four separate heartbeats and my own.

I looked at my wings. Brown, like they should be. So I flew to the cave’s edge and peered out.

The right forest, bathed in starlight, looked back at me.

Alright then, this represented a problem.

The cynic in me said it was nothing.

The paranoid exile in me wondered if there was something suspicious about this particular cave or if the unsettling sight of Goth’s prophecy had bothered me enough that I was dreaming nonsense.

Either way, I would sleep no more, and with a cry like a rooster I snapped everyone wake.

“Good, evening! And what a beautiful evening it is! Time waits for no bat. Who’s hungry?”

And with a weirdly high giggle, I shot out of the cave, putting its strangeness behind me.

“I didn’t notice last night but I think we’ve actually reached the southern valley,” Shade said. “Look how it dips just over that plateau.”

“How are we ever going to find them in this?” Marina asked in despair. The valley, were it the right one, stretched endlessly into the distance, the mountains a silhouette that were dwarfed by its vastness.

“If you call up your Sound Map, together we could try and figure it out,” Goth said cheerfully.

Sound Map? Interesting concept. Shade closed his eyes, focusing on nothing.

He narrated his vision, landmark to landmark. What a strange ability, these Sound Maps. It intrigued me and I wondered if it was a similar talent to the usual set, like singing into an Echo Chamber or projecting an image.

“There’s towers,” he said. “They’re consumed by flames, and there’s lines of fire shooting in and out of them.”

Human. I didn’t like it.

“Incredible,” Goth breathed. “What an incredible ability. You’ve given us something to work with, Shade.”

Towers of Pigeons, Towers of a Cathedral, and now Towers of Fire. What next, Towers of Rocks?

“So there are two towers?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And both have fire?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything else in the vision? Any more human buildings?”

“It was too confusing,” Shade said.

“You’ve done well,” Goth said. “Together we’ll figure it out. Please excuse us. We hear the lunch special here is excellent.”

They looked at me like I might take an invite to join. I was too morose to think about hunting.

“Are you alright, Nuria?” Marina asked.

“Just a little tired.” Without another word, I dropped into the nearest tree and hung on a naked branch, my thoughts a miasma once more.

Assuming Shade saw literal fire, I had a pretty clear idea of where we might be headed next. There were only so many types of towers topped by flames. In fact, I could think of only one such creation.

In the meantime, I found myself reflecting. I’d never get Goth to share what he’d seen in his dream, it would be downright weird to ask. He might know it as a prophecy, he was likely well trained. And I considered if it was time to leave before things got complicated even if that did, potentially, screw these youngins over.

With my classic ability (or maybe curse) to overhear, Marina’s voice came to me through the trees, an argument with Shade.

So she too was having second thoughts.

“I’m going to be better friendless than clueless! How could you just blurt out your Sound Map like that when they’re secrets of the colonies! You don’t even know these bats!”

“I’m sharing it with you, aren’t I?” he clapped back.

That must have stung because I heard no more and I thought she must have flown off. That, or I was steadily losing consciousness in the cold.

“Come home,” someone said. I couldn’t recognize the voice. It reminded me of my father’s. Powerful as the ocean, yet calm and steady.

And as if summoned by the thought, an image, almost like him, materialized in the emptiness.

“Stay together,” he said, form wavering as my consciousness start to waver. “Go home, sister.”

Then something batted me in head and I opened my eyes, arms flailing to strike back.

“Ugh, Throbb, what is it?”

“I said, let’s go, sister.”

“Get off me before I bite your ears off, _brother_ ,” I growled.

“Ah, ah,” he chided quietly, and I followed his eyes to where, if I escalated, we’d have an audience.

Shade had returned with Marina, and after a brief discussion we rendezvoused with Goth, hidden in the protective embrace of another massive and pungent evergreen.

And still sleep called to me.

Curse this weather! What else could it be to rip the energy right out of my very bones!

While the others finished their meals (two small scrawny rodents and a fuzzy gross moth), I tried to remember the bits of prophecy I’d overheard from Zephyr. It seemed critically important, maybe because it all felt so fresh. Goth hadn’t said a word, lost in thought as he bit into the rat’s ribcage with a hearty crunch. He waved Throbb off when the pigeon-bat came too near and I squinted suspiciously.

Throbb seemed unconcerned. He roosted and began intently polishing his band. And whined.

“These bands. They're hard to clean and they're twice as hard to keep shiny.”

“Because they’re copper, dumb, dumb,” I said, lifting my arm so my own was on full display, glinting in a thin beam moonlight, “I’ve no troubles.”

Marina snorted, amused.

“Why do you think the humans band bats anyway?” Shade asked.

Again, problems. These weren’t conversations our fragile group was ready to have yet. If last night was any indicator, and let me tell you it sure as hell was, between Marina and Goth we could fracture in seconds. Whether or not that was for the better I couldn’t decide.

So while Goth made an ally out of Shade, appealing to the Silverwing's insecurity, I knew better what to focus my energies on. My father’s voice was still nagging at the back of my mind, refusing to fade away as dreams are meant to.

“To imprison us,” Goth growled. “So they can steal the secret of our night vision.”

“Maybe the band means something good,” Marina said carefully, sorrow in her voice.

“Such as?”

“They’re to name us,” I said, looking across at her. “To recognize us.”

The prince scoffed.

“Tell me how a band imprisons us then,” I asked. “Is it magic? Is it tying you to the building? Obviously not, or you’d be there now.”

“I asked the Brightwing, not you.”

Oh, I wanted to bite him. This dumb f-

“I don’t know,” Marina said uncertainly. She’d lost more of her confidence and good cheer and I realized she was insecure herself. About her band. “Just, something special.”

“Something special,” Goth echoed, closing his eyes and smiling darkly. “How amusing, senorita.”

She scowled, bristling.

“And having a name isn’t special?” I asked.

“From a human? Hah. They’re still marking us.”

“The humans captured her, and then they let her go. And yet you’re an authority on what they mean with her band?”

“And you believe those trash are our friends, after what they have done to us?”

“Do not forget who built the pyramids you live in,” I said sharply. “Who made the sacrificial stone. Who left stories on the walls. Who gave you Cama Zotz’ name. It was not us. You’re like a child with no sense.”

“Those humans worshipped Zotz, they feared him, they had sense. Not like these heretics. I wouldn’t count on anything from these humans.”

“Zephyr said they wanted something from us,” Shade said uneasily, thinking, perhaps, the secrets of our abilities.

“Be he also said the humans wanted to give us something,” Marina said.

I smiled. “And you, who are set to follow Voxzaco, would so easily discard the words of a prophet,” I told Goth.

He scoffed again. “Nonsense, from a northern-”

“He was a prophet of Ix Chel,” I cut across him. “He told me the path to find you and I found you. Do not think that was by mistake.”

“Ix Chel is dead,” Goth snapped.

“Who is Ix Chel?” Shade asked.

“Nocturna,” Marina said quietly. “That’s who you meant, wasn’t it? When you said Ix Chel’s prophet. It was Zephyr.”

“Yes,” I said. “She is the goddess of the night and creation. Two names but the same entity.”

“So we are travelling with a heretic,” Goth said. “How amusing.”

I smiled again but without kindness or amusement. “Yes and he’s staring right at me.”

But I was glad that things had temporarily deescalated between Goth and Marina.

“Our god exists here as well,” I said. “But you call him Diurne. Or I gathered that’s the northern name that Zephyr gave to him. Nocturna's brother, guardian of my people and the dead.”

“I’ve never heard of Diurne,” Shade said. “Only Nocturna.”

“Stories are lost with time. If Zephyr knew, then I suspect it is something other colonies are aware of. You should ask your elders, when you see them again.”

“She’s right,” Marina said. “I’m sure Frieda will know, just like Frieda will know about the bands.”

“But why would you say she is dead?” Shade asked. “When she opens her wings night comes. And when she closes them it’s day.”

Surely because he didn’t want to alienate Shade, Goth was momentarily speechless. Unhappy, irritable, but speechless. His quick disdain and disinterest in their northern mythology did nothing for my confidence about his supposed intentions to help the Silverwings.

“Nocturna cannot die,” I said. “Life must exist for death to exist. Of course it’s all much more complicated than this.”

“How do you know all this for sure though?” Shade asked.

“It’s recorded on the royal pyramid's walls and in the cave,” Goth said. “And in our Echo Chambers. She’s ignoring that a single record doesn’t make it wholly accurate.”

“Neither does a modern priest,” I shot back.

“Stories grow.”

He meant the small, crumbling pyramid Voxzaco had found, long before any of us were even born. That changed everything. Where in life the priest had sunk his shriveled little claws into Goth’s family with such completeness I didn’t know. Though since Duirne wasn’t a common name in the north either, I supposed there'd been a shift somewhere, far from duality.

Call my confidence and lack of doubt just as deranged, if you will. I knew I was right.

“So you left,” Marina said.

“I’d no reason to stay.”

“Obviously,” Throbb said. “if you’re this deluded.”

“And why should your stories be more real than ours?” Marina snapped. “You say Nocturna isn’t real? What do you know!”

“More than you,” Throbb said, swallowing the last of his mouse. “You’re just a child.”

Unfortunately, that extra push did it. Marina snarled and took off. With a shrug and an awkward grin, Shade followed.

I turned on them. “Enough of this! We will all die here, if you continue to behave like a pups with no sense of the world and no sense of those around you.”

I opened my wings with a final look of disdain.

“Without help you will starve in the north, alone and afraid.”

“You’re no seer,” Throbb said.

“You would weep if I were,” I said, and I left, trailing after Shade.

“He’ll come back to me,” Goth shouted at my back, laughing. “He won’t leave his colony to die at the talons of owls.”

And with a pang of frustration tainted only slightly by dismay, I knew what he said was true.

The little bats were in full confrontation by the time I arrived. Instead of getting involved I hung back, hiding once more, trying not to become angrier at Goth and Throbb than I already was.

“What about Nuria? She’s a meat-eater and you’re not complaining about her,” Shade said.

“She’s at least trying not to make things worse!”

“ _And_ she doesn’t think the bands are evil?”

“Do you?”

“I- no.”

“Let’s leave them. _Please_ , Shade, while we still can.”

“They can protect the colony. The owls are still out there. Remember?”

“I want to go back to the island,” she said quietly.

“Marina-”

“How can you trust them?”

“I-”

“Over me!”

“Then go back!” Shade yelled suddenly.

“I wish I’d never me you, you know that!”

Ah, me. Such complications. But Marina was smart, and with a pang of regret, when Shade banked towards the little clearing where Goth waited I slipped back into the shadows to follow him. If he was part of Goth’s own prophetic dreams, what good could come of that? Marina would be fine.

But I suspected this was what Goth had wanted. To be rid of her.

Mission accomplished, if I ever saw one.

I couldn’t think of how to retrieve her, without the rest of Team Hibernaculum escaping while I was otherwise engaged. Me, the second piece of a puzzle Goth was finished with. So be it. I wasn’t so easily defeated.

Shade would know where the island was and she’d probably stop by the cathedral.

There is always time, for those who think ahead. Still I sang a little prayer that Marina would not be devoured by birds in the meantime.

You know, just in case someone was listening.

***

The forest stood still as I returned, entering the clearing just after Shade. Both Vampyrum had left the sheltered evergreen, preferring to stand on the ground and gamble with their lives, for reasons unknown.

“Hola,” Goth said. He seemed in much better spirits, as if the argument had never happened at all. He even spared me a cheerful wink.

There were many things wrong with this scenario. Foremost, I could smell a kill that I wasn’t in the process of pilfering. Particularly since this one had a quality I hadn’t experienced in almost a year, having not needed the collective fury of puny bats added to my growing list of troubles.

“Where is Marina?”

“She decided to go back to her island,” Shade told him miserably.

“Oh, there are owls about. And we promised to protect you from them. Throbb, go find Marina and escort her. It is the least we can do to repay her.”

Escort Marina back to her island...

What a riot!

It doesn’t take a genius, or even a dullard, to see through that lie with how much Goth detested the girl. He must have known I knew it, because as I tensed to take off his gaze roved over me and I could see his little shrew mind trying to find a way to keep me with him while Throbb bolted into the sky.

Can’t fool me, no sir.

“I should be the one to do it,” I said thoughtfully. “I’ve never flown over an ocean. Sounds thrilling.”

“It was,” Shade said, a happy memory emerging from his dulcimer mood to put a smile on his face.

And here he was trading this egotist with a charming girl who loved him. Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself here. _Would_ love him, I was sure. (Trust me, I know these things. One of my many talents.) Provided she didn’t get eaten.

“Can’t imagine Throbb has much energy in him to spare heading north.”

“A promise is a promise, senorita,” Goth hissed in my ear. “Zotz does not look kindly upon liars. Now, Shade, why don’t you call up your Sound Map again?”

He flashed a little knowing smile while Shade concentrated.

Ugh, what a jerk!

A hypocritical swine!

I’d long since located where he’d cached the dead bat, was half-tempted to pull it out of the undergrowth and throw it in Goth’s face while the Silverwing’s illusions crumbled around him like a termite’s dusty mound.

Who was I kidding? Crumbled was weak. There was no hyperbole for the shock Shade would have. Might even kill the poor thing.

I’d had enough. What did I have to fear?

“Well, been nice travelling with you, O’ Prince! But I’ve made my decision. Shade, it’s been a pleasure.” With that, I took to the skies, heading north east, grinning secretly as I heard Goth’s claws scraping against the earth as he bulked at the instinct to follow me.

“Good luck with your choices, senorita!”

Something in the tone made me shiver, but I could take Throbb no problem. I’d been beat up a bit the first time, after the accumulated abuse of humans and pigeons and though I was hungrier now, and thinner, that night was behind me.

Then came a much more unpleasant realization that almost stopped me dead.

Let’s say I successfully interfered with Throbb slaughtering the poor girl. What then? If I killed or maimed him, what did that lead to? I still needed to go back for Shade. Back to Goth. With a mysteriously vanished Throbb. And what if I couldn’t defeat Goth? What if he managed to kill me first? Marina would go after Shade whether I gently advised her to be sensible or not. Realism sometimes slap you in the face like a springy pine bough.

Curse all of them!

Why did I care about puny northerners! What problem of mine were they? I could be happy and healthy in a cathedral right now, living it up on the scraps from human festivals and opportunistic rats seeking protection from the elements and finding my warm embrace instead.

And curse that dream! It might not even be real, it might be some fabricated power fantasy my miserable brain had spat out!

So when Goth and Shade were both glints of light behind me, I dropped onto a branch, wings folded, head resting upon my wrists trying to think.

Stay together. Whose cursed voice was that? Zephyr’s, maybe. Not from the dream but from before.

And what if it was also my brother’s? I saw that now, why there was a strangeness to the dream voice that had reminded me of my father. Why should the dead try to commune with me? What could possibly be so important that I should be inserting myself into this shit?

I’d just convince Marina to come on back. That solved everything nicely. Throbb would have to stop pursuing her; she’d be too close by to kill without Shade knowing. I wouldn’t need to risk myself getting into any fights, especially since I couldn’t just eat Throbb in front of her to recover the wasted energy. Everything else was just a problem that came next. Yes, I’d deal with them as they came.

Just as I lifted back into the sky, however, something batted me down again.

“Throbb,” I purred.

“Are you in love with me, senorita?”

“Oi, can the two of you relax on senorita? It’s not charming. Oh, just the bat I was looking for!”

Marina flitted a little ways off, her pace slowed to a miserable and sedate flap that we could meet in a couple beats. I pulled ahead of Throbb, reaching her while he shouted over me.

“I’ll be fine!” Marina shouted back, eyes rolling, a look of utter disgust marring her otherwise lovely face. Not directed at me, of course. I was far too charming.

“Oh, shut up, you absolute nuisance,” I told Throbb. As Marina turned away from him, I kept pace, wing tip to wing tip, smiling in a sisterly way.

“What do you want?”

“Are you really going to fly all the way home because of a petty argument?” I asked.

“Yes, because it’s a _home_. Shade doesn’t want me here. He’d rather have you bunch.”

I didn’t much care for being lumped into with that duo.

“Shade’s an idiot,” I said. See? Nothing but honesty from me. “He’s interested in glory. Young boys are like this. They’re a bit defective. Some of them grow up and some of them become Goth.”

Marina snorted. “Yeah, who he wants to be.”

“He wants to be what he _thinks_ Goth is, not what Goth _actually_ is. He’s not secure in his identity right now, that’s all. Confidence looks appealing when you hate yourself.”

“Pfft, Shade doesn’t hate himself.”

“He does. You can see it from an ocean apart. He’s not your responsibility, but you’re good for him. A good friend.”

I needed Throbb to leave before a throw down happened. I didn’t like the look on his face or the thoughts that might be meandering through his head. So I turned to him, looking at him crossly.

“You know when I said I’d escort her, Goth asked you to come back? Now that I’m here why aren’t you on your way?”

Maybe he was just that intent on bat meat and thought I wouldn’t mind. We were all hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the first night we met and it was making me down right nasty.

“I don’t need an escort,” Marina said belligerently. I ignored her.

“He said he needed help figuring out Shade’s Sound Map. The Silverwing says it’s the last landmark. They’re close by, but they’ll be hiding in their cave now. I can’t figure that kind of nonsense out.”

“The Silverwings are here?” Marina gasped. “In this valley?”

I gave her a hard look and though confused she seemed to get the point to shut up.

“Whatever. Why should I care anyway!” And with that she flapped off.

“Marina!” I shouted, then turned and snapped at Throbb’s snout, startling him with my closeness. He flinched not wanting a fight and then finally, at last, turned around. After all, if Goth had been lying, then a delicious Silverwing colony awaited.

When he was gone, Marina glanced over her shoulder then banked towards me.

“Nuria, what is going on!” she shouted. “Shade narrated at least three other landmarks and-”

“Shush, quiet!”

“I don’t understand-”

Then, from behind us, came my worst nightmare. At least for today.

“Marina!”

I closed my eyes. Throbb was gone, and somehow in his place safe and sound Shade came barrelling out of the trees like a tiny black lighting bolt. Before I had any time to think, or to plan, or to decide what ought to come next it had all imploded.

I cringed.

He knew.

I heard it in his panic. And he didn’t care if I knew either.

“Marina, Marina, fly! They don’t just eat meat, they eat bats!” he cried. “They’re cannibals!”

I nearly fell to my death right then. Marina’s wide eyes looked from Shade to me and with a scream she threw herself back, far as she could, turning towards her friend. Every fibre of her being begging to flee, and every fibre of mine ready to bank south, into the forest, into the clearing where my brethren waited. Her eyes were still swimming with confusion, for I had not attacked, I had chased Throbb off.

So it was that I made a non-decision, because I could see no way of bringing them safely back, not without knowing if Goth had made a go at Shade once he’d seen the dead bat. And there’d be no reasoning with them now.

“Go now,” I said, then wheeling around, dove back into the trees leaving them with their terror and mistrust.

Had I ever been so angry?

I didn’t think so.


	8. Fire

“Idiota!”

I hit him like a hurricane, pure fury, both knocking him to the ground and throwing him past Throbb. Rolling from the force of my attack we narrowly missed desecrating the remains of Brightwing sprawled in the open. I had the strength and careless disregard that came with anger on my side and I was going to kill him.

And then he slammed me onto my back and I yelped, a rock digging into my spine.

“Hungry, senorita?”

“How could you be so careless!”

“I see that you made no effort to bring them back.”

There was a deadly timbre to his voice though it oscillated between both cold ire and tepid calm. His throat was bleeding where I’d bit him and more than one claw had pierced his wing membrane.

He was more powerful than I'd bet on. Instead of struggling and seeming pathetic as a scared pup, I remained completely limp, as if I was disinterested in the whole affair, happy to lay around all night. It also disguised our power imbalance; I’d been formidable when I’d first hit him, now it was impossible to judge. Whether or not he was fooled, I couldn’t tell. Nor did I care.

“And I should have made an effort, because? For what reason ought I ever do what is convenient to you?"

“I should think, being so devoted to Ix Chel, you might have a sense of duty to family, no? And what is family up here if not your own people? But then you’re an ignorant and bad-mannered shrew who’s out of touch with reality so it’s not surprising.”

“And that’s what I'd expect to hear from Voxzaco's pet. So thank you. Thank you for living up to my expectations. Looks like I _am_ a seer! You _are_ going to die in the north. You think it’s cold now, princess? This is nothing.”

Some might argue this was the last thing you ought to say when someone is in middle of deciding whether or not they want to crush the life out of you. But Goth's smile slipped for barely a second and I knew I was not the first person he'd heard such criticism from.

“Do we still need this irritating heretic?”

“Good lucking getting the little bats' trust back without me. I told them to run.”

“Er, yes,” Throbb said.

“You know, unlike you, I have never tried to eat my own species before,” Goth mused. “No matter how much they look like pigeons. So keep that in your fluffy head before you act like your current situation pitying northerners makes you morally superior to me.”

“You going to get off or not?”

“Not with you.”

“Be still my beating heart,” I said, completely humourless.

“While we’re here, you seemed to recognize what these towers are,” Goth said.

“Did I? It’s so hard to discern tone isn’t it and then someone is babbling, just as you’re trying to recall- ow!”

Throbb latched on to my muzzle.

“Geh uff uh meh puhgon!”

“There are two of us, and one of you,” Goth reminded me. A good point. “So, Towers of Fire, Nuria?”

“You’re gonna love it,” I said, and he moved just as I was about to put every speck of residual rage into kicking him off. Standing, I dusted earth from my mane and tossed a twig aside. If he’d messed up my pigeon feathers there’d be another throw down. “Don’t worry. We couldn’t miss it if we lived a hundred lifetimes. Let’s get off the ground.”

Goth scooped up the remains of the bat and then we were airborn again. To be fair to him, I wouldn’t have wasted it either. Now that we could see better, it would be easier to get our bearings. But where to go exactly? Shade’s instructions weren’t clear. It was simply a landmark that we could only hope to find. As getting away from the duo was slightly more complicated, I saw no loss in going along for the ride until another opportunity made itself known.

“Okay. Shade came from the city with the building,” I said. “Stands to reason that the Sound Map is still taking him south-west. My bet is the colony’s roosted somewhere in that mountain range. Think about it. Plenty of rock and plenty of deep caves. Doesn’t really inspire me about how warm it’s going to be, but they couldn’t fly over it, they’d freeze.”

Goth considered this for a moment, eyes roving into the distance.

“That,” he said, nodding at the faint aura on the horizon. “The only thing lighting up the sky.”

“Very likely. Whatever that is, it’s human like Shade’s towers.”

A tense and annoying silence passed as we kept ourselves focused on the goal, thinking only of the distant aura of light. There’s nothing like being alone with company and I didn’t care for it.

“What happened?” I said at last. “Shade came tearing out of the forest. Did you threaten him?”

“He must have seen the Brightwing in the bushes,” Goth said. “He took off looking for water, but I thought something was odd.”

“Alright, so he was scared, not threatened. He panicked and ran away.”

“You lied to me,” Throbb said.

“Of course I did. Why shouldn’t I? You were going to kill her, I didn’t want that, so I had you leave. It’s simple, really.”

Goth side-eyed me. “You care for the little bats.”

“You’re wrong,” I said bluntly. “I could care less about them. Marina showed you kindness in letting you come along though you are strangers she feared, and then you repay her with murder. It’s basic decency. You still need their Star Map, by the way.”

Actually, he didn’t. He just needed to head directly south, just as I had headed mindlessly north, until something was familiar. In fact if he continued south-west but skirted around the mountains, he’d hit the coast. I couldn’t recall exactly where I’d veered east, because this mountain range wasn’t familiar at all. I’d avoided it entirely.

And for this all Goth needed was to watch the moon and the sun, though you may be disturbed to know that sometimes the moon rises more to the north or more to the south. Confusing, isn’t it? Don’t ask me to explain. I’m no astronomer. Besides that, if he got turned around too much he’d know from the temperature. I assumed anyway.

While I admit the stars were ideal, I didn’t feel they were strictly necessary.

Call me cautious, I didn’t want to give away all my own knowledge just yet and provide my own understanding of the constellations.

A river followed the cut line and a series of smaller human towers, and a river means prey. It twined into the distance, almost like a trail. We decided to follow it, flying low.

Every now and then I cast echoes for any trace of life and was disappointed as usual. Did fish swim in rivers this time of year? It would be a bit too dark to see now. Dusk was a much better time for fishing. Something caught in an echo ahead of me, wiggling strangely, like a beefy moth. I didn’t recognize it. Sending another burst of sound out, it returned with a strange shimmer. Very odd. Very odd indeed.

Something was weird about the air here. Even weirder than that peculiar vision inducing cave.

And I recognized it later than is dignified.

“Zotz, watch out!”

When my rather formidable self connected with Throbb’s body his wings buckled and we went tumbling out of the sky, crashing into the river with a splash even a tidal wave would envy. By God! Was it ever cold! My wing tips stung and my toes paradoxically burned. Through sedate and shallow waters we flailed awkwardly to the rocky shore, Goth landing beside us.

“Whoops! Sorry,” I said, eyes wrinkled, smiling sweetly (never awkward, oh no, not I, only charming).

But he didn’t growl because he realized quickly my fast reflexes and show of heroism had saved his fluffy butt.

“What is _that_?” Throbb asked, rubbing his back and looking up a set of tall pillars, each with thousands of strands of tangled thread strung between them. It spanned the entire width of the river and its only victims so far were the crunchy leaves which had allowed me to see it. Who knew I’d ever be grateful for autumn! Without these pitiful defoliating trees, Throbb and I would have gone barrelling head first into disaster.

“Some kind of human trick,” I said. I wasn’t about to admit it was exactly the kind of contraption that had led to my imprisonment in the false jungle.

Goth looked between us, and then as if we had known each other’s thoughts we all flew up to the pillars and chewed the threads of their connecting loops, watching the net sag and collapse into the river, cackling joyously.

“No more river,” Goth said wisely. And wordlessly we agreed.

The next half hour passed more pleasantly then, pleased with ourselves, imagining the humans’ surprise, and laughing at their feeble attempts to deceive us. After a thorough hour of shit talk, we recalled shenanigans from the building in which we’d successfully maimed the fellow who studied us. Shame Goth and Throbb weren’t regular Vampyrum; I might almost begin to like them.

When we’d settled into our usual moods of barely suppressed contempt, Goth brought up what I’d been wondering since Team Hibernaculum had split.

“I need the Silverwing’s trust again. Marina I can do without.”

“That was your mistake. They’re too close to try and separate,” I said, for not only was I right, I didn’t want my efforts to save her skin lost. This was a dilemma for sure.

“You seemed to have ideas back in the valley.”

“It’s a sticky one,” I mused, humming. “They’ll think now you planned to eat them from the start. That was my assumption when we met. That you’d grab a Star Map and then grab a snack. I would have.”

Throbb smacked his lips at the thought of delicious, tender northerners. The most food focused bat I’d ever know. (Though, frankly, I imagined they would be gamy and tough with all this hardship and deprivation. Unlike bats of the south who’d be casually browsing on succulent bugs and sweet fruit. Far be it from me to judge another Vampyrum’s preferences, but these northerners probably tasted awful. I made a note to ask later.)

“Then you think too small,” Goth said.

Ouch. But excellent. We were getting somewhere.

“You better hope they think small. Maybe they’re even imagining you planned to winter in their Hibernaculum, slowly feasting on Silverwings in an icy mountain cavern, hoping they’d not awaken.”

“Hey! That’s a good idea, eh?” Throbb said suddenly with a grin so wide it reached his ears.

“What? No!” I cried, snorting. “What part of _icy mountain_ screams welcome and toasty warm to you!”

“As a last resort, perhaps,” Goth said thoughtfully. “But, no.”

So, he wanted the colony alive. I did too, really, just not at the expense of tolerating this grand war plan. If he intended to go that far. I still couldn’t tell.

“I don’t know how to convince them to come back if you interfere,” I said. “They fear you. They might not have made their mind up about me. If we find them at the towers then I can speak to them. You’d better hope the colony hasn’t shown up and heard the tale first. Their elders aren’t going to be so easy.”

“Then we kill them,” he said. Boy, that was blunt. “There will be other bats with other maps. Then at least we will have enough energy to make it back to our beloved jungle.”

I had to agree, given the circumstances, that was a solid backup plan. Assuming we weren’t mobbed. Though Shade had said at present his colony was one of mothers and pups, who would likely be more inclined to flee and hide than to fight us. I was one to leave pups alone, of course. Although baby birds? No. Alas, their crunchy bodies were too tasty. (Hmm, was I too food focused...)

Now don’t go running off thinking I was in love with this plan, because surely I was not. Like the Brightwing massacre, there’s a degree of self-preservation one must exercise. I’d failed to exercise it then out of sorrow and anger. I did not know if I would stop myself doing so a second time.

Speaking of food, having left the river and rejoined with the cut line, Throbb had dropped to the ground, rummaging suddenly. Out popped a grey mouse and he swallowed it in one go.

If only that was me.

So we took some time to forage. Our wing span being so much larger, it was impossible for Shade and Marina to overtake us even if they’d figured the landmark’s direction out immediately.

“You’re sick of the stars? Try eating these scrawny mice!” Throbb laughed.

“Then why not stop?” Goth replied, drier than ever.

“Because you can’t eat just one! Just try. It’s impossible!”

Another darted out of the bushes, narrowly skipping by Throbb, but not by me.

“Eh, not bad,” I said.

***

“Goth, are we there yet. Can you see the Towers of Fire? I am so tired of all this flying.”

“Quit whining! I’m trying to make up conversations in my head,” I snapped.

“If we were there would be still be flying?” Goth asked, annoyed.

“The cold, I am sure it is slowing my wings. And I am so hungry. I could eat a moth, maybe, two moths!”

His brother laughed. “That is so sad. Think of the jungle, amigo. It is all that matters.”

We arrived late into the night, clouds moving to cover the moon and stars, dense, thick clouds that had an uneasy nature. I sensed a storm, and hoped for a reprieve before the rain began.

Stretching out before us, endlessly, was the ugliest human construction I’d ever seen.

It was a tangle of pipes, monstrous barrels and tanks that could swallow a house, and concrete buildings of every size, all lit up by tiny, artificial suns so that it glowed in the night more brightly than the moon.

On the north and the west side was one tower each, constructed of metal beams, and from them a pillar of fire burned into the darkness, both flames as long as a young tree is tall with a width more than twice my wingspan. They were chaotic and wild, flinging to and fro at the whims of the wind’s breath and even from a distance we could feel its heat and knew to keep back. At any second it might come whipping towards us, and engulf us. The Towers of Fire.

An oil refinery, in fact. And the towers were simply flare stacks that I assumed were used to provide the humans more light. It smelled more vile than the most stagnant and poisonous of tepid ponds and I wrinkled my nose, disgusted.

Goth cast an echo towards the flare stack, narrowing his eyes in confusion.

“I hear only the tower itself,” he said doubtfully. “How does an echo see fire?”

I’d wondered the same. It would be one thing if Shade had come before with his family and named the towers afterwards. But it was an echo _song_ , I reminded myself. Something Ariel had constructed out of nothing, just like a projection. She could have sang anything into her son’s ears. I closed my eyes, and smiled.

“Look harder,” I said and when Goth focused I sang a flame directly into his head, far closer and larger than it ought to be. He threw himself backwards with a yell, dropping several feet.

“The echo song northern bats use,” I cackled.

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” he growled.

“That’s Cama Zotz’ domain, isn’t it? Guardian of echoes, yes?”

He glared and then turned away.

My enemies spotted a wooden shack, an outbuilding, and headed towards it both wary of getting too close to the humans’ hideous maze.

If the colony was here likely they would do the same and avoid going too deep. It would be easy to get lost, the tower was in the way and not safe to skirt around without a wide detour. Nor would the flame be safe to fly over, because occasionally it would double in height before shrinking once more.

“I can be hungry or cold,” Goth said, shivering violently. “Not both. I say we roost.”

Then we slipped in through a hole in the rotten shingles, finding protection at last from the damp wind. Throbb came behind me, getting stuck in the hole, feet dangling.

“Uh, Goth, on the horizon. I think dinner is on the way. Two small bats and an owl.”

“There’s not time for that,” I said. “Do you really want them to see you kill two other bats?”

I wouldn’t have minded taking a go at the owl, freeing its prisoners in the process, but I yanked Throbb into the shack and roosted.

We waited for them to pass, until I could hear the soft rowing of wings, a sound like hushed whips, and then claws scrabbling on the rooftop.

Goth and Throbb smiled patiently.

“This looks like an entrance,” Marina said.

Darn it!

“Something doesn't smell right.”

“Nothing human smells right,” Goth replied from the shadows.

Marina screamed, falling onto her back, Shade crying for her.

More claws, wood cracked, rotten boards collapsed, and suddenly everyone was a confused heap of wings, feathers, and shingles. We rolled apart but before anyone could regain themselves, Goth wheeled on the owl, cornering it with his teeth bared.

I followed with a battle cry.

“Get away from them, murderous vermin!”

“Don’t you touch him!” Marina snarled.

“ _What!_ It’s the enemy!” I barked. And it was properly cornered now, this comedically puny owlet. Size aside its beak tore into Goth's toes with no trouble and he shouted, hopping on one foot. In a flurry it was gone, landing somewhere behind us with a thump. I turned.

“You’re frien- wh- they’re murderers! They’re the enemy! Are you nuts!”

“So are you, cannibal!” Shade snapped back. I couldn’t exactly disagree, except on one point.

“Who have _I_ murdered! Other than a few pigeons.” Lately. Oh, yes, and a couple mice.

What’s a girl to say? I wanted to blame Throbb, if he’d whined less and let me plot, except I couldn’t. Was I to apologize? Sorry my brethren were thoughtless idiots. I promise they won’t do it again? Right.

“You eat bats,” he snarled.

To his credit, Throbb had extracted himself and flown to the ceiling, blocking the exit. Clever, though the sinister smile I could’ve done without. No tact at all, these two. Hearts on their proverbial sleeves. At least put some effort into being something more wholesome than an ominous predator!

“Look, mate. My species eats just about anything that moves, I’ll admit that,” I said, somewhat more annoyed that was practical. “That’s just how things go in the jungle. This particular idiot,” and I cast a glance at Goth, “found a dead bat and thought, like an idiot, that it would be appropriate to treat a dead bat as equal to regular carrion.”

“I don’t believe you,” Marina said.

“Remember how I asked if your family was with you?”

“Yes.”

“Right. And I asked if you were part of something and you said part of what.”

“So?”

“Because before I found Team Hibernaculum here, I watched a bunch of _his_ murderous vile people,” and I jabbed a wing at the owlet, “ripping apart a nursery colony of Brightwings in the same direction I came, from the bluff.”

They all looked sick. The owlet flinched and looked at the ground and I knew I’d likely won.

“For no reason,” I growled. Finally, it was an opportunity to vent some further rage. “They did not eat them. They did not stop to look back. They killed them and left _like it was nothing_. That forest was riddled with the dead.”

“You’re lying,” Shade said. “We’re not that stupid!”

“She’s not,” the owlet said quietly. “My father did send a squadron out to enforce the closed skies. I overheard Atlas tell him they’d eliminated a Brightwing colony. I’m sorry, Marina, I couldn’t- I didn’t-”

Her eyes went wide and glossy, like she was in another place entirely.

“But they were just- just migrating. They wouldn’t even know,” Marina said tearfully. For all she knew, it could have been her own family.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, but she stepped away crying. How fortunate, how beautiful, this lovely owl to deflect attention from our own sins. I just hoped it would stick. Shade held her, but he looked over her shoulder, glaring at Goth with hate.

“What he did was evil. How could we ever forgive that!”

Goth looked genuinely offended, like his honour had been stained. It was a nice touch. Hurt would be preferable, but likely his ego couldn’t handle that.

“We will starve here, Shade,” I said. “I tried to eat insects once, but this time of year there is not enough. Not for us. We’re too big. Either we compete with you and you starve, or we eat what we find.”

“I’m sorry, Shade,” Goth tried to say. “It’s-”

I cut across him though, afraid he’d say something stupid and ruin it all.

“Let us help you. These owls won’t stop, _w_ _ill they_?”

The owlet didn’t answer me, he looked at his feet again.

“They can’t murder you without going through us.”

Why, you ask? Why deceive them at all instead of helping them flee?

“But if you want to leave, then I’ll let you,” I said.

Yes, I, not we, because I, the nonthreatening one, wanted to be seen as the one in control of my barbaric and uncultured peers.

“Pigeon-bat! Come down so they can pass.”

Throbb was irritable, more interested in eating them than getting along and he landed on the floor with a _hmph_.

“Maybe we should continue this outside?” the owlet asked shyly.

Goth was tense. The muscles of his arms were like strained cords waiting to snap. He didn’t like it, his prey so easily escaping.

Marina nodded, wiping the last of her tears away. Her face was now a stone mask, she was numb and her thoughts were clouded, which slowed things down nicely.

The northerners went first, then me so I could keep an eye on the real enemy. The cold immediately hit us, along with the wind which had only become more vicious. Outside of the shack with hiding places easily accessible among the oil refinery we were on more equal terms to continue our conversation. They didn’t flee. I took this as a good sign. Surely, I’d won this battle. Hell, yeah. Go me. Team Nuria of Nowhere, reuniting our band of headaches!

Gazing into the distance I was relaxed for the first time in hours, able to take a breath and enjoy a moment of calm.

Except-

I blinked twice.

The colony.

The Silverwings! Hidden among the hideous, fat clouds. They were visible as the flare stack flickered back and forth, a swarm of tiny bodies flying straight toward us.

Why did Zotz continue to be so fickle?

Then with a blinding strike and an ear shattering boom, lightning split the sky and rain poured down in a torrent, drowning out my strings of expletives.

One conversation does not a treaty make!

It does however lead to many delicious snacks speckling the concrete and making cringe inducing whines before perishing. And if I didn’t think quick, that was exactly what was about to happen.

“The colony!” Shade cried suddenly, joyous or with despair, the rain was too loud to know. Nope. No. Bad. “Marina, Marina, we can catch up to them!”

Enjoy them while they last, buddy!

She shouted something to him that was lost in the rain and then the owl peeled away from her.

So sudden, so chaotic. Goth’s mind was kicking into overdrive. The colony approached us from the north east. Were they going to land here? In this gross place with its pungent odors and its chemical residues?

How to make them veer?

Shade was already racing mindlessly towards them and I followed, needing to cut him off. In his excitement and anxiety he was a speedier runt than ought to be possible. Goth behind me, catching up. We’d had the same thought. Shade alone was more valuable than eating his colony.

A screech cutting through the thunder made me whip around. And now owls! Dear, Zotz, when does life give you a break.

Then it came again. Not owls, but the owlet! He’d landed on a tower where his shadow cast as a giant against a concrete wall, flaring his wings, screaming his ugly owl cries. The colony turned as one, like the arm of a titan passing through the clouds barely visible through the mist the torrent produced.

Shade put on a burst of speed, and he was just ahead now, hyperfocused on this one task.

Too close to the flare stack, to its unruly flame.

I dove, teeth snapping around Shade’s feet. My wings closed as he screamed and we fell, dropping into the tower’s beams moments before the wind shifted.

A second scream followed, more piercing, more horrible than anything that can be dreamed up and retold.

Goth lit like a star. There was something kind of beautiful in it, though I can’t tell you what or why, save for some dark part of myself satisfied by this turn of events. Shade was crying in pain and I released him, tasting blood, having forgot he was still dangling from my mouth. We both watched as Goth plummeted, his wings turned to flame, falling through the rain and hitting the ground many wing lengths away. Quickly the screams were a soft snivelling that led to silence. Throbb’s cries came from behind.

By then the rain was pounding and lightning laced through the sky, thunder cracking mere seconds after. Water poured into my eyes and off my matting fur as I spiraled to the ground.

Goth lay on his stomach, his wings crumpled and the membrane melted. Rain had already begun to clump his fur together so that he no longer sizzled like a live power line. When I nudged his chin with my wing tip, his head shifted, but the prince was surely dead.

Whoopsie-daisy! Well, these things happen sometimes, don’t they?

Though it was rather gruesome and even I found myself wincing.

Wobbling on his feet, Shade’s jaw shook and his eyes shone with unspilled tears.

“I didn't mean-”

“I made this choice,” I said dully.

“But fire- I didn’t-”

“Don’t look anymore.” I pulled him up with me into the air as Marina joined us, the owlet following. Both stared at the body, eyes wide.

Throbb was no where to be seen. I doubted he’d ever make it home.

So ended the male line of a cursed dynasty, left only with his sister and whatever children she might produce. Hopefully none.

More importantly, my troubles were over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol so this is called Solar Flared and a critical event involves Goth getting lit up by a flare stack. Accidental, but it amuses me.


	9. A Ring of Endless Light

As I let Shade go, he flew over to Marina who placed a wing on his shoulder, and then the owlet, who grinned awkwardly, moon eyes closed. Then we rose into the heavens, wary of the flame still casting itself wide with its gruesome and woeful embrace unhindered by the deluge. Its orange light refracted through the rain, a glow eerily encircling the peculiar trio.

And a part of my soul seemed to suddenly close off, the world seemed to slow, and there was that old feeling again, from the time before, of a future closing. There was Shade, at peace with an owl. And the owlet, at peace with him and Marina in the midst of a world quaking with violence. Goth below us and the path Cama Zotz may have hoped to put him on. Throbb’s simple desperation to return home to his mate. I saw the Brightwing’s lifeless eyes and startled face. Marina’s hope for the bands. Zephyr’s calm voice and strange sight and sad eyes and the first night. Who could only see life _._

Then sound came rushing back, as the night seemed to clarify through the mist and the thunder.

“Are your feet okay?” I asked, turning away to put more space between us and certain death, back towards the outbuilding with its fractured roof and then beyond.

“I think so,” Shade said uneasily, bending to check for damage and finding only a little blood. We were two minutes from Goth and he was still looking over his shoulder.

“He is dead,” I assured him, not certain if that was the answer he was looking for.

“I know, it’s just- nevermind.”

How easy it was to forget. His colony had nearly been burned alive too and he felt responsible, just for taking a wee peak at the sunrise. An awful way to go and now he knew how it would have looked, what he would have seen, if their lightning struck tree had collapsed upon any bat trying to escape.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, for really the only irresponsible aspect of the entire event was putting himself in danger by blinding rushing towards the flare stack without considering the fickle ways of flames. He was only a teenager. Our choices were not his burden to carry.

“You really saved my tail.”

I sure did!

“So, owlet, got a name?”

“Orestes,” the bird said without a sliver of fear and plenty of enthusiastic curiosity. He wouldn’t quit his staring with his eerie yellow eyes. He was a fluffy little creature, mottled brown and white with a mere trace of down feathers, likely in the same awkward stage of life as Shade. Of course, never judge an owl by their feathers, who was I to know the ways of this wee owl?

We took cover near the woods, just beneath an old, rusting truck at the edge of the refinery, though it was quickly becoming muddy at our feet as the ground flooded.

“I’ll bring my father here, Shade. I’ll show him the body. Then he’ll finally know you’re telling the truth and let your colony and all the bats go.”

Until I ate a pigeon again, heh… _great_. Future problems. For now sticking to rats or making it look like a raptor was responsible would do. Just couldn’t be seen.

Soon the world quieted, filled with soft drips and plops, the clouds settling. As the rain came to its end, I stretched, yawned, shook off some mud and relocated to the top of the truck.

“Well, my little friends. It is time we part ways.”

“Don’t you need help with the stars?” Shade asked, fluttering down beside me.

“I’ve only ever been on an adventure and that needs no maps.”

“But what about protecting them?” Orestes asked.

Wasn’t this awkward! Had I… actually won? Now that Goth was dead, with my curiosity abated and their lives no longer in potential danger, what an unpleasant thought!

“About that,” I began. “Can’t imagine you’d want a carnivore hanging around too long.”

“You already know the constellations, don’t you?” Marina asked.

“Er, yes.”

“Why not just tell Goth the stars?” Orestes asked.

“Right, you’re new.” No harm throwing our crispy prince under the log now, was there? “I’m betting you were thinking they planned to eat you the entire time, si?”

They did. Perfect.

“Call me a hypocrite for jumping to my own conclusions, I didn’t want to guide them too far south only to be captured by fanatic loyalists when I was no longer useful.”

“Captured! What did you do!” Orestes asked excitedly, hopping one foot to the other. Marina elbowed him. “Oh, sorry.”

But I was already smiling conspiratorially with happy memories. “Property damage.”

“Sounds like a fun story!” he exclaimed.

“As fun as any,” I said. Nice and vague. “How’d you two pair up with an owl?”

“They saved me from a net. I really thought I was done for.”

“Never underestimate the power of a kind act,” Shade chimed, getting a laugh from Marina.

“And then my father tried to imprison them. He’ll be really disappointed I let them escape. But he’s always disappointed in me for something.”

“Third time’s not a charm,” Marina said, winking at Shade.

“Brutus can’t get me,” Shade said. “He’s the one who burned down Tree Haven.”

“And tried to get us tortured.”

What incredible fate. Orestes seemed resigned to this knowledge rather than upset. And what in Zotz’ name was _wrong_ with these northerners, I ask you! Torture. _Torture_? Did they get it from the humans! We had plenty of problems at home, but that tended not to be one of them. Just mayhem, sacrifice, and weird rituals. You know. Quick deaths. Nothin’ fancy.

“ _General_ Brutus?” I asked.

“That’s him,” Orestes said.

“He’s _not_ a pigeon?”

They looked between each other and then sputtered, laughing their sides off. Well I felt sheepish.

“He’s bigger than even Goth was!” Shade said. “You wouldn’t want to meet him.”

“Pfft, I could take him.” To think someone like Orestes would one day be a giant.

“But he’s obsessed with his war,” Orestes said. “Hey! What if you came with me and explained everything! Maybe that’d help!”

A transcendentally poor suggestion! I’d nearly got nailed by sky rats and that was quite enough!

“Yeah, that would be a no.”

“Yeah,” Shade said, grinning at Orestes. “If he thought we were trying to attack you-”

Orestes put a wing over his head, mildly embarrassed. “M-my bad. It was a dumb idea.”

And I had no nice words for exactly how dumb.

“Sorry for, uh, being harsh about your people,” I said. “Guess not all owls are bad.”

“And not all carnivorous bats.”

“Tell that to the mice when you see them,” I said and Orestes laughed. Carnivore humour, gotta love it.

Then something I’d been wondering awhile surfaced with the flare stack behind us.

“So, how do you owls have fire way out here? Fire belongs to the humans and to the storms.”

“We stole it from the humans hundreds of years ago, and they keep it burning in secret nests,” Orestes said. “Pretty cool, eh?”

“Must be good to keep warm.”

Because I was already thinking of stealing myself some too. Just needed to figure out where to settle down and how to keep it alive for longer than it took to carry it home.

“We only use it for war.”

How ridiculous! Here was something to battle the common enemy, this frosty apocalypse, and they lovingly nursed it for centuries just in case they needed to cook some Silverwings!

“I should get going,” Orestes said. “I’ll bring my father here as soon as I can.”

We waved our farewells, and it was soon time to depart lest we stick around too long and meet our maker early.

“Since we won’t be taking a stop to visit the General again, I can take you as far as Hibernaculum,” I said. Then I needed to skedaddle. That mountain range looked downright _frigid_ and what if there were no more human cities near by? “If you like. I’m sorry any help from my people died with Goth.”

“Yeah, if he wasn’t lying,” Marina said bitterly. I was moved by her continued suspicion but I just shrugged in response. Who was I to read that fool prince’s mind?

With the rain gone and the skies settling it became a good night for travel, the world’s heat not being ripped into a cloudless atmosphere and we soon warmed up, continuing south-west until the refinery was a glow at our backs. Threats behind us and in good spirits we roosted on a bare oak, for the pines and spruces were still to wet to risk. It is wind and wet that kills, even in the jungle where it so very warm lost bats have been known to freeze.

“They can’t be far from here,” Shade said, dangling beside me. “But we’ve gotta rest.”

Marina nudged him. “I don’t mind flying on.”

“The Silverwings will be roosting to. We won’t lose any time.”

Or be running from any potential threats. I scanned the horizon for possible day time roosts, it was well past midnight, but ultimately that would be up to Shade to confirm our directions. There was forest aplenty and so there were unpleasant logs aplenty. Sometimes it just ain’t glamourous lodgings.

“Tell me more about Nocturna’s Promise,” I said. It was a tale I genuinely curious about, wondering if there was something to it, some reversed parallel just how Diurne was almost unknown here. Such is the nature of duality, to mimic and mirror.

“I don’t know where to begin,” Shade said, but he seemed happy to share. “You already know we were banished from the daylight by the birds and beasts. In an elder’s story in our Echo Chamber, she must have been ancient, but she sang that even Nocturna couldn’t change the banishment. So she helped us survive by giving us dark fur and echo location. But you have that too and don’t need it.”

“It’s not a story I’ve heard. I’d have to ask our elders,” I said (who would never tell me even if they knew, which I doubted). Our origins were slightly different too, with Cama Zotz being the guardian of echoes. But perhaps he was simply guardian and not giver. The Winged Spirits are mysterious in their ways. “We could’ve been banished and got sick of it. Night’s still the best time for hunting. We’re the biggest creatures in the skies. Can’t be easy to control thousands of us.”

“The Promise was one of her gifts so we could have the sun back. In the echo song, Nocturna opens her wings in the day to cover the sun, but it’s like when it rises on the horizon, only a sliver of it is visible at first. I think I can sing it,” he said, coming closer. “I’m learning.”

“Sure, why not.”

A moment later a hazy picture was spun into my head, like Shade was looking up into the sky. An echo song is nothing but silver, and the sun was high in an afternoon sky and dark. Just a halo. The vision shimmered and blurred as a stream of vague shapes flooded into the heavens, spiraling from shadows. He pulled away and it faded.

“A ring of endless light,” I said.

“Yes, like the bands.”

“Oh, I want to see too!” Marina squealed happily, fluttering beside him. She gasped when she saw it, opening her eyes brightly. “Is that what the sun looks like!”

“No, it’s much brighter, and it’s like the moon and not a ring,” he said. “And warm. After it feels like the echo song is Nocturna’s voice, telling us the law will be broken and we will return to the light of day. Frieda thinks the bands are a way for the humans to say they will help us soon.”

I nodded enthusiastically, mostly for their benefit. I couldn’t even imagine how humans could help them. It wasn’t just the abuse. We could no more speak to humans than we could to reptiles or fish or insects. Sometimes I was even surprised birds and beasts had found a way to successfully communicate. If the bands were a new language, some kind of bridge, then it was uselessly vague. Maybe even cruelly so. Was it just to give a sign? Rather than a proper message?

Goth had been right. _We_ could help. We could end this. But what happened when we left for the winter? Did just the threat of our return mean anything? And what future did we carry with us?

The real problem here was the power dynamic. Frankly that was all it was. The owls were large enough to control the bats, just as the Vampyrum were large enough to kick owls out of their territory. The difference being we just preyed upon them. We didn’t prey upon them and also waste energy actively policing their movements. I couldn’t for the life of me understand the value in oppressing them this way either. Though maybe it was like anything else. The owls believed the bats were inferior, they deserved to be punished, and it was their moral and sacred duty to see it done. What else could justify burning Shade’s ancestral home and annihilating its oral history (a truly reprehensible, godless, and corrupt act) at the same time? At least I assumed the Echo Chamber had been destroyed; they are fragile things.

I’d experienced the same kind of violent control back home, and it was the same, wasn’t it? Founded on millennia old mythology. That I too engaged in. But at least we focused primarily on destroying ourselves. And I was confident we were more than able to, one day, save ourselves.

The bats here had no chance of helping themselves. They really were reliant on some kind of miracle.

Not only was this a desolate land of hardship and deprivation, it was also simply appalling.

“We think my elders will know more,” Shade said. “Frieda’s very old. She was part of a rebellion fifteen years ago.”

“Oo, a rebellion! Tell me more!”

“It went bad,” Shade said. “Frieda says we’re too small to fight, even if it were all the bats together.”

“I dunno,” I said, somewhat inspired. “There are more bats out in the world than owls. Owls need more food, see? So there has to be less of them. There are more little bats in the jungle than big ones, because there’s more for them to eat. The owls here would starve if there were too many of them.”

“But what if the little birds joined them?” Marina said. But my mind was still stuck on that stream of bats, flooding Ix Chel’s heavens, a more than familiar sight. But maybe the northern bats didn’t need my people. They needed their own.

“On the way to here, there is a place called Bridge City where millions of bats live together.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Marina said. “The last bat stronghold.”

“Yes, this is what I’ve heard on my travels. But there is another place too, a cave where the Tadarida gather in millions, far larger Bridge City. Have you heard of it?”

“No,” Marina said uncertainly looking to Shade.

“Maybe they were destroyed by the owls already,” he said but I shook my head.

“I can’t imagine it has fallen,” I said. “You know, I actually wonder where the boundary is. Birds I caught didn’t start telling me about their great revenge plans until the stars began to change. So, maybe the Tadarida live beyond the boundary and remain neutral.”

“They have to if they’re alive. We’d have heard of them, wouldn’t we?”

“What do the Bridge City bats call themselves?” I asked.

“There’s a lot of types but most of them are Free-tails,” Marina said.

“That is the northern name for the Tadarida. So there is a boundary somewhere in the names. Your Greywings, the ones who migrate to the jungle they call themselves the Lasiurus.”

“I didn’t know Greywings migrated so far!”

“Only some who already summer further south, I’d think.” I’d hate to tell them that sometimes they were carnivores too.

“I don’t know why everyone didn’t just move,” Shade said. “This sounds perfect.”

Marina looked at him sadly. “This is our home. It’s always our home. And there aren’t cannibals here, just owls.”

“You’re not actually cannibals, are you?”

Er, this was awkward. Time to completely throw our dead prince under the unholy wheels of a human vehicle. “Only the royal family when preforming special rites and all. Or starving, apparently.”

And let’s move on, shall we!

“Back to the point. Your elders can send emissaries to the Tadarida. Cross the boundary and bring them back to Bridge City. Then bring them north in the summer. It could force the owls to reopen the skies.”

Because to hell with the sun, there were bigger problems right now.

And I was potentially dooming myself in this, depending where the winds carried me after. Empathy is nothing save a path to self-destruction. But to be honest, I didn’t know if the Tadarida’s strong hold existed anymore either or if they were just a legend now. It was an incredible thought. Millions of bats in one place.

“Let me talk to Frieda.”

They were staring at me with a mix of hope and fear that this idea had ignited. Hadn’t Goth done the same, offering a solution only to lose their trust almost entirely?

“Worse case scenario she’ll say I’m just a pup talking nonsense or maybe she can send word to Bridge City and have them go check it out. Worth trying. And here’s hoping she can tell me if a human city’s nearby cause I’m really gonna need the warmth.”

After a moment of contemplation, Shade turned to me.

“Can I ask something?”

“Sure. I’m an open chest with an open heart.”


	10. An Unfortunate Tale

Sometimes an open chest with an open heart. Audience is everything!

“Why help Goth find us after helping us get away?" Shade asked. "If you weren’t going to come to Hibernaculum.”

“Er, they are weirdly persuasive,” I said. As in, bigger. Not astronomically, just enough to not want my spine cracked.

“I mean, even when he said Nocturna is dead it really sounded like you really didn’t like each other.”

“More like hated each other,” Marina said.

“Ah, I see,” I said thoughtfully. I supposed this was the heart of the matter. “We are both set in our ways. Destined to disagree. But if you really want to know, empathetic to your struggles, I really can’t risk being surprised by hundreds of Vampyrum appearing out of nowhere. It was better to come along and be sure.”

“Nocturna can’t really be dead,” Shade said derisively. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“She ain’t. It’s just a story told by a dodgy prophet who fashions himself to be Zotz avatar, I guess. Or this is how he behaves. Goth believed it. It is destructive.”

They both looked at me expectantly.

“Oh, you actually want to know,” I chirped.

“If you’re okay saying more,” Shade said hopefully. He wanted to consume every bit of information the world had to offer. Curiosity is a gift, but the answer was no, it would bother them too much. They had enough troubles.

“It’s not really about Nocturna anyway,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know that myth. I just how it started.” (Okay, alright. I know a little. She abandons that which she created and tries to remake the world and destroy Life to destroy the Dead. It goes badly. Something, something. Blah blah blah. The end.)

Somehow this was still interesting to them. Perhaps because it was such a wild concept. Or because it was my story, wasn’t it? Hmm, perceptive little bats.

“It’s not a nice story, Shade.”

“We can handle it. Can’t we, Marina? We’ve nearly been killed by pigeons, then humans’ ground machines in the city. And then the owls, and now that tower. And we’re doing okay. It can’t be that bad! It’s just a story.”

Hahahaha!

I eyed his enthusiasm cautiously as I reluctantly mulled it over. From plans of war to this. What a midnight! Yet how to condense generations of tragedy?

“If you’re sure,” I said.

He was. He’d regret.

“Alright then. This prophet, who tells this story, came into power when people were starving. He was young, and attractive, and spoke well. A bit like Goth, actually.”

Marina wrinkled her nose and I appreciated the solidarity. Although since I had eyes, our opinions differed on the one point.

“He was an adviser to the royal family of the time, common people liked him and supposedly he was kinda, sorta, maybe, er... charming.”

(And that was unpleasant to spit out! Hard to imagine. Very hard to imagine. Not that we’d had interaction of the truly meaningful variety. Just a distant shudder of disgust.)

“When he said we’d forgotten the old ways and that Cama Zotz was punishing us, people were desperate and trusted he knew best. He said Zotz himself had spoken to him, and guided him to a purpose, and everything we needed was written in one of the sacred pyramids. Usually Zotz sends people dreams. He does not speak to us directly. But Voxzaco was different. Later it was whispered he had reached ascension.”

“How does anyone forget ‘old ways’ if they’re right there in a pyramid?” Shade asked, snorting. But hey, you know, he had a point.

“Because that temple wasn’t accessible,” I said. “And even if it was it has to be read by someone who knows the language.”

(Beginning to see the problem?)

“An earthquake uncovered an entrance big enough for us. Voxzaco was one of the first bats to find it. But it’s human records, not ours. And he and his followers took their interpretations from there, telling us Ix Chel was dead and a balance needed to be restored. It’s not a practice up here, but we offer people’s hearts to Zotz in special rituals on certain nights of the-”

I stopped. Shade’s entire self crumbled, face falling, overwhelmingly distressed.

“Killing people just for their hearts!” he cried, in a squeaky and alarmed manner more akin to someone facing oncoming death than someone being regaled with tales from a land far away. “That’s evil!”

And _that’s_ how you get a bat’s full attention! Their disgust couldn’t possibly grow. Or, this is what their sheltered minds seemed to believe. He’d think better next time. But too late now! So I carried on.

“We’ve always done this. And we don’t kill people we sacrifice them, there’s a difference.”

“I don’t see one.”

Sheesh. No nuance with this sprout, was there? But I was calm and peaceful as the most crystalline of streams. None of this was startling to me anymore, it was either mildly depressing or darkly amusing.

“Well either way, it’s a honour to give yourself as a sacrifice. But it is a choice you make, because you are devoted. It’s just hollow if you haven’t chosen, don’t you think? I think so. What’s it mean if you’re forced? Nothing. Then you’re giving your life for a mortal's purposes. But you’re missing the best part, my tiny friend!”

“Can’t see how this gets better,” Marina muttered. Was my warning not adequate?

“Oh, it’s brilliant. This is the soul of it all. See, this prophet is clever and ambitious. He tells us we are not doing this right, it shouldn’t always be voluntary. It should be the people who speak against Zotz or the royal family. It should be the people who still speak about Ix Chel. Anyone who is seen as an enemy or inferior. That’s the ‘old ways’. Why the guardian of the dead, who welcomes home more dead every day, needs this is beyond me, because in just the first year this works out to be hundreds of people. And if you are clever and ambitious you use this to destroy all the people who might threaten you.

But life likes to bite you on the nose, so when we sacrificed more hearts to Zotz the famine went away. Prey became abundant again. This has caused generations of problems. No bat outside the dynasty has had the same kind of power or influence that Voxzaco has managed to sink his nasty claws into.”

“How do you just stand by and just let it happen and do nothing!” Shade growled. Maybe it was the way I explained things calmly and passively as if it were no more relevant to me than a fairytale, or maybe it was just this infuriating for an outsider to hear. Who can tell!

“I told you, it is not a nice story. It is just a heartbreaking one. You have to understand that people were losing their children, watching them waste away to nothing but bones. Starvation is an ugly way to die. A sacrifice is seconds. There were people who disagreed but by the end of the famine Voxzaco had alienated and made an enemy of anyone who spoke against him, and since the royal family sided with him that was that. This is long before I was born; I was only a few seasons old when I left. If you want to survive you say nothing or you take your family and you try to leave faster than you can be followed.”

“Why doesn’t everyone just leave?”

“You’re always followed,” I said.

Shade and Marina looked rather sickly and yet even more infuriated. I couldn’t imagine how relieved they must be to know they’d never see the jungle or have any unpleasant visits, exchanging one oppressor for another. Though I hoped this didn’t knock the wind out of at least investigating what had happened to the Tadarida simply for geographic proximity. But I wasn’t ruffled by rage that I had predicted.

“Don’t you think he’s lying!” he shouted angrily. “Doesn’t he knows he’s lying!”

“If I didn’t think it, I’d be down there eating insects bigger than your head. And I do think in his heart he believes what he says is true even if a part of him knows that he was making a move for power and doing it well.”

“It all sounds so wrong. Sacrificing people who think different than you.” Shade said. But as I warned Marina, he was not yet secure in his identity, and it seemed also not in the strangeness of the world for he added quietly and uncertainly, “That can’t all be real, can it? How could the Winged Spirits want that?”

“Do you sacrifice your enemy’s hearts to Diurne so that you don’t starve?”

“No...”

“Then you have your answer,” I said.

“Goth and Throbb really are monsters,” Marina spat.

“It’s what they were taught.”

“But you don’t think that.”

“Because it’s what I was taught,” I said. Because it bothered me to have my entire people demonized, I took one for the team. Besides, I had been in a state of stasis until little more than a year ago. “Maybe I am wrong. Maybe my family was wrong. Maybe Cama Zotz has different expectations from the Vampyrum and people would continue to starve. I don’t know. Voxzaco is still a prophet, as Zephyr is. I still manage to trust Zephyr, as do you.”

They squirmed a little, uncomfortable with the comparison. Not that it was much of a comparison to put a kindly and eccentric albino beside a zealous manipulator, let’s not kid ourselves.

“Zephyr is _much_ nicer,” Marina said lightly and laughed, smashing through the depressing tension and we joined her dark humour, chuckling until our sides were sore.

“Zephyr gave us something like a prophecy too, about our migration,” Shade said. “Or I think it was a prophecy. His wings got weird, like the night sky.”

“Yeah, that’d be it. Keep it to yourselves,” I said. “I’ve enough of them to last a life time.”

“So you just ran away to get away from it,” Marina said, likely happy I was a touch less quirky, shall we call it.

“Hah! Well, you know, I perhaps had a little too much fun with some less fortunate souls in a temple I was never meant to find,” I said with a grin, remembering the day fondly. “Perhaps. Not that anyone knows. Except the two of you now I guess, and there are no Vampyrum here to worry about. What’s Goth going to do? Rise as a spirit, listen in, float southbound as a ghost, and inform someone that one sorry soul survived? I think not! I am delightfully alone again to do as I please, like eat three hundred rats maybe. And I can appreciate Nocturna hassle free with all of you, instead of gettin’ murdered. Our crispy friend is far, far away from the World of the Living.”

“Hello, Nuria,” Goth said.

“And sometimes there are miscalculations.”

***

Goth seized Shade before there was time to blink, alive and... somewhat well. His fur was ruffled and burned, part of his wings had been cooked and the puckering scars were far from attractive. Not his best look. Nothing a little time wouldn’t sorta fix. When you’re unreasonably attractive to begin with you can take a few hits. I couldn’t decide if this was one too many but either way he was now a magnificent specimen in survival rather than looks.

“Let us go!” Marina shouted. Not for a moment did fear dog either of them, still fueled by the righteous indignation I’d inadvertently inspired.

She tried to twist and nip at Throbb’s toes but the pigeon held tight. To stop me from flying off, I supposed. A risky gamble. With a glower and glinting fangs Goth wasn’t pleased to see us. Shifting the blame, but what royal prat wouldn’t?

I smiled serenely, as is my way.

“Maybe we should have waited more than a minute before going, eh?”

“Maybe you should have,” he said rather dangerously.

“You know if your agility wasn’t tra-”

“Stop talking.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, but I was trying hard to keep a straight face. Kill a person and spill some of your secrets to them? What a grand start to a potential, likely, possibly destined and glorious vendetta.

Except I hadn’t killed anyone. The idiot had gotten too close to the flame and I’d picked Shade (the kind and friendly soul) in a fit of reactionary panic. Goth (who was worthless to me, which was not in his benefit) had gone through my mind for the second it took to realize turning around to warn him would’ve gotten me toasted too. And I liked my looks.

How was this guy even alive! He’d been sizzling! Like a barbecued roast! Couldn’t he just simplify things and die like a good little prince?

“So you have a name,” he said.

Aw, yes, I’d forgotten. He’d still been living it up in Brazil when I’d merrily fled on my pestilence of an adventure. Plenty of time to be regaled with tales of trespass and vandalism, among a few other dreadfully delightful sins.

“And it’s the ‘of Nowhere’ bit that matters, my friend,” I said.

“You’d be the last of them, I’d think.”

“Sucks for them, don’t it?”

His scowled deepened. There is nothing more infuriating than insolence and apathy and I loved it. Though it wasn’t half my secrets was it? Not when previous knowledge lends your enemies superior context. And then like a swiftly passing gale the scowl was whisked away, replaced by passive indifference.

Oh darn.

“She’s a murderer,” he said flatly.

“All lies,” I said back.

“Do you hear that?” Throbb added.

“No, cold ears.”

Then yes.

Yes, indeed.

“Sounds like hordes of insects,” Marina said. She’d stopped struggling, realizing it would only get her injured.

“In winter?”

More a whipping sound, like the air was being sliced up. Not unlike that propeller from the false jungle’s vent, only far, far more powerful.

“That’s not insects!” Shade screamed. Something whistled by him, grazing his wings as we all exploded apart. A beam of light cut through the darkness, flaring in our eyes and momentarily blinding us. Then a sudden gale picked up, not from the wind but from the twirling wings of a human machine dropping down toward the canopy.

While I was faster than these foolish humans, able to outmaneuver their darts without trouble, without a thought in the world, Shade and Marina were benefited from their tiny size. Nor were they the targets, although a dart had nearly sliced the Silverwing into two neat pieces. Our crisped prince with his ugly wings? Not so lucky. Nor was Throbb who was never the fastest caiman in the waters. Finally, finally, _finally_ , I’d be free of them both!

Except they wouldn’t be delightfully dead, they’d be with the Man whose eyes I’d failed to righteously maim.

Whatever. Those spineless humans would never hit me even if they lived a thousand years, I could afford it.

So I dropped onto Goth to knock him dead out of the heavens (for he was closest, sorry, Throbb, my buddy, my man, my pigeon-bat, but no preferences). Staring at the dart for a moment in annoyance, I twisted to pull it out of my side, and then abruptly fell from the sky like a fading, regret filled comet. I watched as Goth was dropped into the trees a second later, wings completely limp, completely shredding my morale and blasting apart any empathy. Such a waste! When I hit the ground everything was faded. Someone said something in my ear before dragging me obediently along on the ground where we could be found at any moment or snatched up by hungry foxes. I was aware of earth moving and being prodded forward. Then more shuffling and I had the numb thought we were underground, surrounded by mould and mulch. Not human cages.

Curled on my side I tried to calm down, sobbing with panic, staring at the cursed silver fastened tight around my wrist. Finally I understood Zephyr's words. My band was different, and maybe my companions' were too. We'd never be safe. As long as we had them, the humans could find us.

I felt Marina's nose nudge me, wet against my cheek. We said nothing. Maybe even now the humans were lumbering through the woods, trying to find us like weird, possessive serial killers. Or torturers, in this case, otherwise I would have left those two to die and flown off with Shade and Marina.

"Nuria?" she said after awhile. I was gone, a white haze over my vision.

"Shade, something's wrong."

"Maybe a dart hit her."

"Do you think that… she'll die?"

Another me would have been able to read into Marina's tone with precision, to know whether she was concerned or hopeful she wouldn’t have to deal with any more Vampyrum baggage (which let’s be fair and reasonable, if I were her I’d be hoping I was dead). Now I just felt party to a conversation I wasn't meant to hear.

"Why'd she push him out of the way?"

"Think about it, Marina. It has to be hard- how the humans treated them and he is her people's leader. I think she's always been conflicted about it.”

"I hope he's dead. And Throbb."

"There were darts everywhere. How long do we have to stay here?"

"Til next sunset if we’re not careful," Marina said glumly before viciously continuing. “The bands don’t mean anything, do they? All it does is mark us. So they can come kill us. My colony was right, I am cursed.”

“Don’t,” Shade said softly.

I knew their hearts were broken. Two nights and many a hope was either crumbling around them or more convoluted than it had any right being.

“The humans aren’t going to help us. As long as I’m with you, you’re in danger too.”

“No” I rasped. “Your band is different.”

“Nuria!”

“It’s different. It's poison. They’ll take him to their building.”

“They weren’t meant to kill us?” Marina, maybe Marina, whispered softly.

“It feels the same. What they used in the human place. There is something inside ours. Zephyr said.”

I wasn’t coherent after that but well before dawn my mind congealed into something functional. We dug out of the leaves and left the land of foxes and snakes, though I noted how much warmer huddling beneath all that foliage with two other bodies had been. It heated in a way that a cavern could not.

I swore by Zotz I would find a way to rip this thing off my arm one way or another.

**Author's Note:**

> If you find this funny then maybe I'm not as isolated as I thought.


End file.
